


black hole sun

by IllBeYourDetonator



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Alternate Universe - Shades of Magic, Angst, Assassins & Hitmen, BAMF Hinata Shouyou, BROTP Tsukishima & Hinata, Blood Magic, Dark Magic, Elemental Magic, Hinata Shouyou is Sunshine, M/M, Magic, Multi, Pirates, Plotty, Secret Identity, Secrets, Shades of Magic, Spies & Secret Agents, Superpowers, Tokyos (plural), because we need more of that
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:27:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25862803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IllBeYourDetonator/pseuds/IllBeYourDetonator
Summary: "In the same instance, a black hole and a sun exist."With one Antari dead and the other hidden, the parallel worlds are isolated. Kageyama Tobio is a mystery wrapped in a dirty coat and uncontrollable power, and Hinata Shouyou emphatically does not want anything to do with him.A festival of magic is approaching, the sun is burning, and at the edges of the world a darkness rises.
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou, Hinata Shouyou & Kozume Kenma, Hinata Shouyou & Tsukishima Kei, Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio, Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru, Kozume Kenma/Kuroo Tetsurou, Sawamura Daichi/Sugawara Koushi, Tsukishima Kei/Yamaguchi Tadashi
Comments: 14
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is inspired by my love of spies, assassins, secret identities, Haikyuu, and royalty. I'm super excited about this AU, and I hope you enjoy!

Hinata Shouyou is made of sunlight, but he wraps himself in shadows.

As Hinata balances on a needle thin spire in the stifling crimson black of midnight, a scarlet moon hangs above him, like it’s drenched in blood. The stars glitter in white and rose. The sprawling city beneath him is muted, the usual din of Tokyo hushed in the darkness, but the warmth of his home is not lost. His world is quiet, but it is a mutual quiet, lacking loneliness. 

With one exception.

Hinata, just a sliver of shadow against the mahogany sky, is severed from the night. Isolated on his perch from the top of the world. A spectator, looking in. 

Well. That suits him just fine.

A glint of silver, a flash of ruby, and Hinata lifts his fingers to the fresh cut on his pale forearm, sliding them gently through the metallic sheen of blood. He leans forward and traces his glossy fingertips across the metal of the spire he’s crouched on, scrawling a quick, jagged circle. His other hand, gripping the side of the spire to keep his balance, clutches a cold red coin. 

The symbol completed, Hinata straightens up, eyes trained a few feet in front of him where it drops off a couple hundred feet above the stone city below, empty air between him and certain death, and Hinata leaps.

 _“As Travars,”_ he whispers as he flies. _Travel._

Hinata falls out of one Tokyo and into another.

He lands cleanly, lightly dropping down on the grey stone that rushes into existence under him, as the rest of a new city shapes around him. The tall red buildings and quiet streets shudder and melt into grey skyscrapers and bustling city life, the abundance of city lights and flashing cars contrasting with the night sky. A city that refuses to fall asleep. Hinata smiles widely as he straightens up, sharp eyes taking in his surroundings.

He had landed on a balcony, high above the busy, bright streets, where, in another world, there was nothing but empty air. Because Hinata could create doors between worlds, with a couple brushstrokes in blood, a hushed command, and a token for passage, but the door would only open in the exact place in the other world. It just so happened that where this stone balcony he stands on in this world was, there was nothing but empty air in Hinata’s world. So he had to trust the doors, the blood magic, as he leaped from one world into another.

He pushes down the sleeve of his uniform over the small, already clotting wound and takes out a cloth from one of his many pockets to wipe his hands of his blood. Any noise he makes is drowned out by the car horns and traffic and nightlife milling about below him, but his movements are quick and soundless anyway. The balcony he stands on is not his favorite place to land, but it’s one of the highest points in his Tokyo, other than the castle, and it helps that a few hundred feet up _is_ his favorite vantage point in this alternate Tokyo. 

He slips a pair of black gloves on from a pocket of his uniform, and turns to look at his reflection in the dark glass behind him, where the balcony leads inside the huge building. His mask is off, hanging from his back, and his wild orange hair is on full display, bright enough for the fiery color to reflect in the glass. 

Hinata is not worried about being seen by anyone on the other side of the glass, because he knows nothing lives on that level. No one will even go near this building, let alone go inside, unless they are ignorant or suicidal. And if it so happened that someone enters this building, they will never, ever come back out. Hinata is safe.

Hinata is the only one who would be.

He pulls his mask over his face, obscuring everything down to his neck. The shape in the glass is nothing more than a shadow now. He turns back to the edge of the balcony, peers down at the lively, bright city that draws him in, peers up at the roof of the balcony and the never ending night above him, sighs and leaps upward.

He catches the top of the roof and swings himself up to the balcony directly above. The stone is wet and cold beneath the flexible fabric of his gloves, and he suppresses a shiver at the sudden chill of wind that brushes over him. Hinata wastes no time once he’s climbed over the railing over the new balcony; he leaps straight up again, to the one above, this time balancing on the railing itself as he stretches to the next one. He’s mindful of the slippery stone in the damp atmosphere, keeping his movements careful and sure, but he’s fast, springing higher and higher up the tall, tall building. He’s nothing more than a slight black shadow, scaling a building the same shade of black. The city pays him no attention.

It takes him less than two minutes to scale the entire rest of the building. He lifts himself onto the roof, his blood pumping, not winded in the slightest. He takes note of his current surroundings, marking every shadow on the rooftop and ensuring it’s fully empty, and then swivels back around to scope out the city.

It’s endless from up here.

Hinata’s Tokyo is not the only Tokyo in the universe. The one he watches over now, from his perch high, high above, is another city called Tokyo. It smells like smoke and gasoline, thick and cloying in the air, but Hinata loves it anyway. The streets are paved with cement and the buildings vary in shades of grey, but there are lots of other colors, in the blinking, flashing lights and the vivid, alluring billboards, shouting in a language of lines and slashes about music and people and excitement. The city thrums with energy and life, and it’s easy for Hinata to forget that this is a world without magic.

Hinata lifts his head, gazes at the bright horizon illuminated against the dark canvas of the sky. His mouth is set in a grim frown as he takes in the skyline.

Because at first glance this Tokyo is bursting with life and light, but his peripherals catch on the dark spots, the faded greys brushed over the towers, the skyscrapers, the bright buildings. The muted colors in small swatches, buried in the lights. It’s only from Hinata’s high vantage point that he can make out the fading pieces of the city, the areas where the darkness is bleeding through, spreading into this world. Areas like the dead building Hinata watches from.

All over the city the darkness spreads, swallowing whole buildings or single trees, poisoning the magicless world. As far as Hinata knows it’s only Tokyo; it hasn’t spread further than the city. It’s the same in Hinata’s Tokyo. Black creeping in the shadows of the city, in the corners of his eyes. Slowly, but never ceasing.

“You’re here.”

Hinata contains a smile, his gaze not leaving the horizon. 

Nothing living resides in this building.

“Shouyou.”

Hinata faces the voice, his full mask hiding the wide grin that spreads as he sees the sliver of shadow break apart from the darkness of the rooftop, gold eyes glinting in the lights from below. “Kenma! I had to come see my favorite dead thing!”

The gold eyes look decidedly unimpressed. “I’m not dead.” They blink. “But he is."

Hinata tilts his head. Kenma, only a flash of gold in a shadowy form, withdraws, turning towards the middle of the roof. He stares down at the empty stone. 

“Kenma, what do you mean? There’s nothing there.”

The gold eyes lift to meet Hinata’s directly, even through the thick shield of Hinata’s mask. “The one made of ice. The darkness has swallowed him, Shouyou.”

The night is suddenly a lot colder, and the sky a lot darker. The shadows loom above him. “Which layer- which world is it?”

Kenma’s hushed whisper falls over him like glass. “The starving one.”

Hinata’s knife slips smoothly into his fingers, and he lifts it, prepared to slice the inside of his forearm again, regardless of the fabric of his uniform. A gentle pressure on his wrist stops him, though the hand is scarcely made of darkness and smoke. “Shouyou.”

“I have to find him, I could save him- he might not even be dead-” Hinata’s breath comes out fast and harsh. The one made of ice. _Hoshiumi._

“He is.” Kenma’s voice is blunt, but kind. “His death and grave are not the same, though. Shouyou, be careful.”

“What- what do you mean?”

“The darkness is rising.” The pressure lifts. Kenma’s gold eyes glitter. “It will end in flames.”

And suddenly Hinata is alone.

The night is heavy, weighing down on him. The rooftop is too large, he’s out in the open, like prey in an empty field defenseless against the predators from above. Kenma’s words slice into his mind, throbbing with an unknown importance. He knows of the black magic that swallowed an entire world, he knows it’s slowly bleeding into the neighboring worlds. Everyone knows the story.

The greedy city, with it’s greedy king, the closest to the source of the magic. Sitting too close to the fire. The magic overwhelmed it, engulfed it in darkness, twisted the magic into something black and evil. The city was also called Tokyo, revered and respected for its power. Now they call it Black Tokyo. Feared. Isolated. A warning, a tragedy.

It was Hinata’s Tokyo, the one called Red, that locked the doors between worlds, isolating each one to protect itself. No one could enter or leave, and the magic could not escape.

Hinata reopens his wound and dips his fingers in the blood, glossy and black in the night. He crouches, and traces the symbol once again onto the cold stone of the rooftop. He digs out another token from his uniform, an ivory chess piece.

He stands, and steps forward, into another Tokyo.

The grey smog and city lights and honking traffic fall away, sharp white spires spiraling into existence around him. The sky is a muted black, void of stars, and the city around him falls silent, a stark contrast to the Tokyo he had just left. Almost out of habit, Hinata tenses.

This is a Tokyo he hates. 

_The starving one._

White Tokyo.

The buildings are white and silver, the streets paved in marble and granite. Hinata stands on a building much larger and wider than the one he had left, a faint grey that betrays its death to the spreading darkness. The city around him is cold and harsh, cut in sharp lines and jagged corners meant to intimidate. The skyscrapers reach higher, the air holds a desperate sort of tension, and the biting wind carries the scent of metal and blood. It’s hopeless and bitter. The magic here is withdrawn, faint.

This world is the second farthest from the source, between Red and Grey. It lacks an abundance of magic, and it craves it. The magic is retreating from the city, slipping out of its fingers, milked dry. The city is starving for it.

Hinata ignores this though, the city pulling at his skin, trying to reach for the magic he holds within him. His gaze is locked on the pale form crumpled a few feet from where he stands. The white, spiked hair. The light blue uniform, the white cloak. 

Hinata steps back, feeling sick. The shadows conceal him, but he doesn’t think to be worried about being seen. His hands are sweating, his lungs feel numb, like he’s not getting enough oxygen. The pale form seems too small to be Hoshiumi, because in Hinata’s eyes Hoshiumi has always been a lot larger than he seems. His size never mattered, because his presence was large enough for two people. But now the magician is a tiny pile of white lying on stone a darker shade of white, in a world so desperately cold and bitter. His life has been taken, and the city eats away at the magic he left behind.

Hinata creeps forward and tugs Hoshiumi’s shoulder, rolling him onto his back. Lifeless eyes stare up above at the empty sky, mismatched. One is a cold blue, almost silver. The other is full black, running edge to edge, no pupil, no iris. There’s nothing human about that eye. It is pure magic; the mark of a blood magician. An _Antari._

“Hoshi.”

There’s a slash in the fabric of his uniform, the edges tinted red. Hinata pulls it aside and inhales sharply at the very thin slice on Hoshiumi’s porcelain skin. It’s not bleeding anymore, and the cut itself is jagged and narrow. Almost like a paper cut. A paper cut deep enough to cut through organs, deep enough to kill. If he had bled out, the wound had to have been cleaned, and Hoshiumi’s clothes would’ve been changed. There was no other circumstance that would leave him here, scarcely a drop of blood on him, killed from a too thin slice.

Which meant.

_His death and grave are not the same._

Someone had killed him, and they left him here, to rot. Hinata stumbles back from the body, eyes darting around the empty rooftop. Someone cleaned him of blood, changed his clothes, dropped him onto a dead building where no one would find him. 

Hinata racks his brain. Hoshiumi was an _Antari,_ known as the most powerful magician in all the worlds. His death will not go unnoticed. And his body is here in White, his home world, and unless there is another unknown blood magician able to travel between worlds and drag him along with them, he was killed here, too. But _who_ killed him?

Hinata stops himself from thinking _why,_ because there are too many possible reasons. Hoshiumi was an _Antari,_ he was in danger the moment he was born.

So someone in White killed the only known _Antari_ in the universe, the single most powerful magician and warrior in every kingdom.

Hinata tastes bile. 

Whatever killed him must be incredibly powerful and dangerous, and capable of entering a dead spot to dump the body without being killed themselves. Unless-

Hinata sprints forward, avoiding the crumpled form of Hoshiumi, and crosses to the other side of the rooftop. He doesn’t stop, just leaps up to the ledge and launches himself into the air, arms outstretched like wings. 

He falls. 

The shadows catch him.

He’s at the entrance to the dead building, staring up, up at the intricate steelwork, the windows dark and glaring back. He’s curled in Kenma’s arms. 

“Thank you.” Hinata hops down. “I wasn’t sure you’d follow me.”

Kenma says nothing, just blinks slowly at him in gold.

Hinata gestures to the gaping entrance, the front of the first two floors a warped mess of metal beams and chunks of marble. The skeletal structure of the building protrudes from the ruins morbidly, a relic of destruction and tragedy. “His killer might be in there. I’m going to find him.”

The farther Kenma is from Black Tokyo, the less corporeal he seems to be. In Grey Tokyo, he was merely a slip of shadow. Here in White Hinata can make out straight, longish hair falling in his face, and his pale, slim figure. Kenma lifts a slender hand to brush aside his light hair. “His killer is not there.”

Hinata trembles with vengeful energy, itching to find who murdered Hoshiumi, itching for a fight. Kenma studies him curiously.

“Kenma, what’s _happening?_ Who killed him, _why?_ Does it have to do with the darkness?”

He casts a glance around at the empty street, the pale street lamps lighting the white roads and sending the atmosphere into a cold, gloomy mood. There is no one around, especially so close to a dead spot, and Kenma conceals him in shadows, but Hinata doesn’t risk lifting the hood of his mask. 

“The darkness is growing restless.” Kenma steps forward, the bright of his eyes even brighter, almost glowing, narrowed in a sudden urgency. “Shouyou, you’re not safe, you need to be careful-”

“What do you _mean?_

Catlike pupils dilate into moons. “The darkness is rising.”

Hinata breaks away from Kenma’s piercing gaze, looking directly up, where he had left Hoshiumi’s corpse on the rooftop. His eyes drift, and he notices the moon is barely a sliver, a slice of white against the empty black. “The last _Antari_ is dead, Kenma. There’s no way to get word to the neighboring thrones. I don’t,” he stops, feeling a rush of overwhelming panic before he can push it back down. “I have to tell Tsukishima. And- what about the White Crown? They’ll realize Hoshi is missing soon, and- Kenma?"

Kenma is gone when Hinata faces forward again, and he lets out a long sigh, slipping into the corner of the dead building’s entrance to stay out of the light of the street lamps, even though there’s no one in sight. He can feel exhaustion beginning to weigh down his feet.

_What is he supposed to do?_

What _can_ he do?

The last known magician capable of traveling between worlds is dead. If Hinata is the one to deliver a message to other worlds, the people who know Hoshiumi is dead, the people who killed him, will know that there is another blood magician in the universe. Another _Antari._

Hinata lifts his head to the left where he had slipped into the corner of a building, and comes face to face with his reflection again, in one of the dark windows. He pushes back his hood, his orange hair springing up in wild locks, and he stares back into his mismatched gaze.

One pale eye, bright gold in the light.

The other eye is full black, edge to edge, no pupil or iris. Pure magic. Mark of a blood magician.

Now that Hoshiumi is dead, Hinata is truly the last _Antari._

From his vantage point in a cluster of shadows across the street from Hinata’s shaking form, Kenma watches as Hinata convulses forward, choking on tears. He fades back into another Tokyo before he can see Hinata straighten, pull his mask back on, square his shoulders, and launch himself back into the night.

...

The White Castle is cold and dark, but common folk scramble in the alleyways underneath, quiet as mice, quick and unseen as them, too. The night is lifting. The guards will be waking up, readying to begin patrols or training, and the members of the throne will be arising soon, as well. If night is ending here in White Tokyo, the same goes for the other worlds, meaning Hinata will need to get back to Red soon. 

The White Castle is not easy to get into unseen, but thankfully Hinata’s only had to do it once, years ago, the trace a symbol in blood on a hidden wall. There are two symbols Hinata’s uses, one to travel between worlds, and another to travel within them.

Hinata slips into an alleyway closest to the castle, his movements muted. Radiators stick out of the many windows on either wall, wisps of pale, torn curtains drifting in the slight breeze. Dust and debris litter the smooth white ground. His blood when he reopens his wound for the third time that night bubbles up, and glitters darkly as he drags his fingertips through it. He traces the symbol to travel within worlds on the white brick, a circle, a slash. Less than a mile away, on a wall tucked away inside the castle, an identical symbol burned.

Hinata travels between worlds by marking a symbol in blood. He doesn’t have to specify a place because wherever he is in one world, that’s where he’d be in the other. To travel within a world, however, both sides have to be marked by the exact same symbol, like handles on a door. Hinata steps forward.

 _“As Tascen,”_ he says. _Transfer._

He emerges in a dark, and blessedly empty, hallway, on the highest floor where rarely anyone passes. Around the corner are windows in the stone walls, and faint light drifts in, enough to where he can make out the strokes of blood crusting on the wall. Hinata immediately redoes the symbol for the next time he visits. The symbol needs to always be exact. He had learned the hard way what would happen if there was the slightest mistake in the drawing.

His hand shakes as he draws, and he has to pause and hold his breath before he can begin again.

The shadows seem so dark. 

It’s so quiet

He’s so alone.

_His death and grave are not the same._

_Hoshiumi._

Larger than life, a seagull soaring far above the waves, free and open and wild. Now, a crumpled white form on a lonely, rotting building in a city too busy starving for power to notice. Hinata had just left him there. _No._ He is going to go back, once he knows for sure...

The castle is easy to navigate for someone who has been slipping through its shadows for years. A glimpse outside the windows shows a faint white tinge on the horizon as the night lifts. He doesn’t have a lot of time.

The King and his advisor, along with a handful of knights, are found in a smaller chamber besides a larger meeting room, tucked away in a corner like they don’t want any interruptions or intruders. Hinata can probably find a way in if he tried, but he doesn’t need to see, only to listen in on what they say, so he silently enters the empty room and, in the blissful darkness, climbs up the high wall to the decorative vent that both the larger room and the smaller, neighboring chamber share, so he can hear more clearly. The only handhold is the crown molding at the top of the wall, and the thin shelf directly under it, so Hinata takes a few steps back and runs up the wall, catching the dip in the wall with one hand and steadying himself with the other. He hangs there, and then curls his body in so he can crouch more comfortably and tilt his head towards the vent.

The voices from inside are almost clear, and he can quickly make out the deep rumble of the King’s voice. “-can’t keep this hidden forever."

“There’s no way for contact, Your Majesty.” The second voice is higher, and the words are lifted faintly, like the speaker does not share the same care the King does for the conversation. “There’s nothing to do but wait.”

Hinata peers through the tiny slits in the vent, spying a flash of red hair and the gold of a crown. Another voice speaks up, “Is it possible? Are the worlds closed from each other forever?”

“Another messenger may turn up in the future, there’s no telling when. For now, the only thing to do is wait.”

There is a silence, and Hinata shifts in agitation, prepared to leave as the conversation seems to have ended. Then, in a low voice anyone but Hinata would have trouble picking up, the king says, “It’s rising.”

The darkness of the chamber behind him is thick, heavy.

Hinata leaves.

.…

To say that Tsukishima is mad is an understatement.

Well, not _mad_ exactly. There’s an intense frustration and irritation radiating from him so deeply that Hinata shudders. He knows he’s in trouble for entering a dead spot in the first place, and the initial anger is only amplified by the sudden wave of shock and helplessness brought by the news of Hoshiumi’s death. Tsukishima and Hinata didn’t know Hoshiumi personally very well, but the grief will come. However, right now they have the unsettling feeling of being trapped.

With Hoshiumi dead, Hinata is the last _Antari,_ the last person in the universe who can travel and communicate between the worlds and link them in their isolation. _Except._ Nobody knows and nobody _can_ know that Hinata exists. Which means-

“There can be no communication between the worlds.”

Tsukishima spreads his palms on his mahogany desk, leaning forward to lock eyes with Hinata. His gaze is furious and frustrated, reflecting how Hinata feels. Hinata drops his gaze to the stacks of paper on the edge of the desk, his brow furrowed.“There’s something coming, though, the king said, we need to stay together now more than ever-”

 _“No._ You need to be hidden. You’re more useful if no one knows another _Antari_ exists. Safer. And,” Tsukishima hesitates. “If it’s imperative that you be revealed, if there is an absolute need of communication... You will step forward. But we keep your identity hidden as long as possible.

Hinata nods quickly. “Okay, okay. Got it. But, um…"

Tsukishima narrows his eyes. “What.”

“Hoshiumi. White _knew_ he was dead, but how? No one can enter the dead spots, and also the knife wound? That was cleaned? Who would do that, clean and move the body, who _can_ do that, move it to a dead spot? And-”

“Hinata, stop.” Hinata looks up, chest clenching with guilt at the tired look Tsukishima gives him. It’s very early in the morning, and while Hinata’s sleep hours are sporadic and flexible, Tsukishima is a normal human being, albeit a very powerful magician, and he had been dragged out of bed much earlier than usual. “Sorry…”

“Hinata, those are very concerning signs, but it looks more political than anything. It’s _White_ , and frankly, their issues can stay on the other side of the door. And literally everyone in the world will be looking to kill the last known _Antari,_ it would be nearly impossible to pinpoint a motive, if there even is one.” Tsukishima’s gaze softens slightly at Hinata’s miserable face, a near indiscernible drop of his lips. “I know you want to help. But there’s no use, now.”

Hinata frowns deeper, his normally bright eyes dull. “Hoshiumi is dead, Tsukki.”

A long, slow blink. “Get some sleep, Hinata.”

...

The morning breaks in a burst of bright red and then the sky is awash with blue and pink, dusted with clouds. Light spills over the cobblestone and the city awakens slowly, stretching and yawning in the new day. The bay glitters in the sunlight, and the crisp air breathes life into the waking city. In a high, looming tower in a magnificent red castle, a sleepy little assassin curls deeper in his bedsheets, closing mismatched eyes as the rest of the world opens theirs. A spymaster adjusts the glasses on his nose as he peers down at the piles of paper on his desk, shaking off the deep set worry and agitation weighing on his shoulders. 

On the steps of the castle, a dark haired boy blinks upwards.

And at the edges of the world, darkness rises.


	2. in the sun, in my disgrace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I am Kageyama Tobio. I am an Antari. I am here because Hoshiumi Korai is dead."

_ Kenma and Kuroo stood at the edge of the world.  _

_ “You think it will work?” _

_ Kenma didn’t answer. There was really no point, they both knew this. It didn’t matter what they thought, it didn’t matter if it worked. They would try anyway. They would always try. _

_ Kenma and Kuroo stood at the edge of the world, facing a bleeding sun. The evening light cast shadows on the deck of their ship, and slants of light glittered on the tips of the waves. There was nothing but ocean, all around, wide and endless, and the sky above them. Kenma leaned against the bow of  _ Nekoma,  _ and Kuroo rested on the helm. There was a tense quiet on the upper deck, a focused calm as everyone was lost in their heads, thinking. So much thinking they had done these past months. Planning, preparing. And now the time had almost come.  _

_ Once the sun slipped below the watery horizon, it would be here. _

_ “Kuroo.” _

_ And Kenma opened his mouth to say-  _

_ He doesn’t know what he would have said, if things had not gone the way they did. He doesn’t know if he would have said goodbye, or said something comforting, or thank him for always being by his side. He doesn’t know if Kuroo knew in that moment what it was Kenma was going to say. He hopes he did. Kuroo always knew the words Kenma didn’t say. _

_ The quiet was stolen by the wind. From one instance to the next, the world broke. _

_ The storm seemed to rise from the ocean, or reach down from the sky, waves lifting and slamming into the vessel, wind tearing at the sails. The ocean was furious and a midnight black, the sky an angry grey. Kenma fell to his knees, saw Kuroo stumble, grab for his hand, miss. Lev and Yaku and the others were shouting. Kuroo met Kenma’s eyes, locked in time, but Kuroo was the Captain, and he broke free, rushing to grab ropes, control the thrashing ship. Wind howled in his ears, salt water stung his eyes. Kenma couldn’t find the breath to yell his name.  _

_ It was only a glance. No. He looked back. Kenma stood up, legs spread to brace himself on the unsteady wood planks. He gripped the slippery bow of the ship with white hands, lifted his gaze to the horizon. The sun.  _

_ The sun was- _

_ “Kenma!” _

_ Kenma gaped in horror. His eyes dropped down, back to the rest of the crew, numb. Cold was spreading down to his bones.  _

_ He stumbled as another large wave hit the right side of the ship, and he went down, feeling a sharp burst of pain on the back of his head as it connected with the floor. The floor- the floor was dripping with something thick and black, like smoke, but more solid. It slipped through Kenma’s fingers, trailed down his wrist. He craned his neck up to see, but there were icy strands of the darkness around his throat, holding him down. _

_ He could hear screams, familiar screams he didn’t want to think about, and he squeezed his eyes shut. The darkness crept inside him, too, the cold seeping into his heart, his soul. Cold, so cold.  _

_ Golden eyes snapped open just as the darkness took over. _

_ Kenma cried his name just as the darkness fell. _

_ Kuroo. _

  
  
  
  
  


On the surface, Red Tokyo is peaceful and the citizens live happily and safely, secure in their comfortable lives that no danger will ever come for them. Or rather, that if it does, they will be saved. Because underneath the layer of peace that spreads over the city, is the whisper of a savior, a shadow more myth than man, who guards and protects the city. He is nothing more than rumors, hushed tales of a sliver of red night keeping away the shadows. A victim in a dark alleyway will tell of a flash of black and red and the danger suddenly reduced to just a corpse bleeding out on the pavement. They’ll see him on the rooftops sometimes, just glimpses, and hear of the people he’s saved or the dark intentions he’s ceased, and they’ll whisper and whisper and they’ll call him the  _ Crow. _

Dangerous, powerful, a vigilante monster. A hero of the night.

This feared and revered assassin sluggishly slides out of bed, and abruptly trips over the shoes he’d left lying on the floor.

“Ouch.”

He lifts his fluffy head, and yawns, looking like a baby orange kitten and not at all like he could snap a man’s neck in a split second without hesitation. His bleary eyes take in his room from his oddly comfortable vantage point on the floor, squinting at the too bright light shuttering in through the window. Judging by how bright it is, he’s probably already hopelessly late for training. 

Hinata’s head thuds back on the floor, his limbs loosening, and he’s just slipping back into sleep when a harsh knock at the door sends him scrambling up, nearly tripping yet again on those damn shoes. “Shouyou!”

He’s- he’s not wearing any pants, shit, wait a sec. They’re in a crumpled wad sticking out of his wardrobe. They’re dusty against his legs as he slides them on- the knock comes again. “Shouyou?”

“Just a sec-” A waves his hands in a practiced motion quickly over his face, magic settling over his two-toned eyes, concealing the slight detail that marks him as  _ more  _ than human. The mark only a handful of people in this world are allowed to see, allowed to know. To his regret, Yachi is not one of those people. 

The events of the previous night lay heavy in the back of his mind. Hoshiumi never knew of Hinata’s true nature, mostly because Tsukishima never found a reason he should. Hinata never outright spoke to him, only trailed him a few times on Tsukishima’s orders. Hoshiumi had taken the title of  _ Antari  _ early on, but by then Hinata was already the  _ Crow,  _ despite being a couple years younger. Hinata had looked up to him.

He pushes those thoughts away determinedly, shoving down his emotions. He has dealt with death and tragedy before, this is nothing new.  _ Doesn’t make it hurt any less. _

Hinata hops over and opens the door with a big, hopefully genuine looking, smile. “Morning, Yachi!”

His smile slips at her furrowed brows and the twist of her lips. She wastes no time. “Shouyou, all the servants must be present in the throne room this morning, it’s urgent.”

“What is it?” It would make sense for Daichi and Suga to summon the rest of the royal court, the nobles, and Tsukki, but the servants? What would they need the servants for in an urgent situation?

Yachi, the steward for the Red Crown and the single person in charge of staff management and basically running the castle, only shakes her head. “I don’t know, the summons is from Suga himself. I- Shouyou, I’m really worried! Do you think something could have  _ happened?” _

Hinata fixes a reassuring smile on his face, adjusting his day old clothes enough to pass as presentable in front of the royal court, he hoped. “I’m sure it’s nothing, I’ll go now!”

“I’m going to get the rest of the servants, I’ll see you there,” Yachi sighs, worry etched into her expression as she waves Hinata away. Hinata passes her and heads down the hall, still fussing over his unkempt clothes, oblivious to the tousled orange mess of his hair. “Try to wait to get answers, Shouyou!”

Knowing him, he’ll probably burst out with questions as soon as he enters the throne room, even if the meeting hasn’t begun. Hinata turns back around to give her a sheepish smile. “I will, don’t worry!”

The entire walk to the throne room Hinata vibrates with scarcely contained energy, curiosity and only the faintest thread of worry rising as he sees Tsukishima enter the high, intricately decorated doors of the throne room ahead of him. The tall crimson doors, accented with gold, are open wide, with two familiar guards standing on either side, casting glances at each other. They offer welcoming smiles as Hinata approaches, ignoring the required stoicism of the palace guards’ job description. “Hinata!”   
  


“Noya! Tanaka! Good morning!” Hinata slaps their subtly outstretched palms on the way inside in greeting. Their smiles offer no clue of the nature of the summoning, and Hinata walks into the expansive chamber with his faint grin still in place.

It falls for the second time this morning.

Despite the warmth of the light cast in a sparkling display through the magnificent, rainbow of windows adorning the walls of the room nearly from floor to ceiling, and despite the familiarity of the red drapes and curtains and rugs decorating the sweeping setting of the heart of the castle, it is  _ cold.  _ There’s scarcely anyone present, and it’s alarmingly silent in a way Hinata has never witnessed before. Like a breath caught, words withheld.

The Kings don’t look up when Hinata comes in. They are speaking in hushed voices to each other on their tall, crimson thrones, heads bowed, eyes shadowed. Hinata tries to catch Tsukishima’s eye where he stands riggedly before them, oddly alone. The rest of the royal court is startlingly absent. Tsukishima does not look away from- Hinata stops.

There’s a figure kneeling before the throne. 

“Hinata!” 

Hinata turns toward the whisper. It’s Ennoshita, one of the other servants, standing at attention off to the side with two servants from the kitchens. The rest, Hinata assumes, are on their way with Yachi. Hinata goes to stand beside him, tilting his head questioningly, struggling to refrain from bursting out with questions like Yachi warned him not to. Ennoshita only shrugs, glancing at the figure. 

They are turned away from the servants, facing the Kings, head bowed low to the ground and hands tucked at their sides. They are oddly very, very still. Dark hair glints almost blue in the morning light filtered into the room. They wear all black, a misshapen cloak that conceals their form, and Hinata can make out long, slender fingers peeking from the sleeves, strikingly fragile looking. His own fingers are pockmarked with scars from years of training and fighting with wicked sharp knives, the tips callused from constant blisters as he scaled rooftops and walls. The difference is distinct.

Hinata looks over as Yachi takes her place beside him, followed by the rest of the servants. She offers him a nervous, confused smile, which he returns, then turns back to the figure, thoroughly puzzled. Are they royalty, is that why their hands are so soft looking? What does he want with Red?

If possible, the room grows even more still as Daichi stands, clasping his hands in front of him. He looks over the attendants of the summoning, the servants, Tsukishima, and the dark figure. He stands tall, kingly, exactly how one would expect a man who could lead armies, but Hinata thinks his eyes look weary in a way they haven’t for a long time. “Nishinoya, Tanaka, the doors.”

As the guards close the imposing throne doors, sealing them in silence, Sugawara rises. “We are sorry for any worry we may have caused you with our summoning. This is of urgency, but there is no danger present.”

Hinata feels the breath of relief the room lets out at the reassurance. But his eyes stay fixed on the figure, his magic shifting under his skin.  _ There’s something wrong.  _ Tsukishima does not glance at him, but Hinata can see that his shoulders remain tense as well. 

Daichi waves a hand at the kneeling figure. “Rise, and repeat your statement for the court.”

_ But this isn’t the court-  _ Hinata wants to say, but he only trembles in agitation, burning a hole into the visitor with his sharp gaze. If they feel the pressure of Hinata’s stare, they show no sign. They stand with a careful sort of grace, unfolding with a languid ease, the bulky cloak falling in a dark curtain over a slender frame. Hinata has yet to see their face, but he can tell their chin is lifted, pride carved into their respectful stance. 

When they speak, their voice is like silk. “I am Kageyama Tobio. I am an  _ Antari.  _ I am here because Hoshiumi  Kōrai is dead.”

The silence that falls is deafening. Hinata’s magic shudders and writhes. He blinks, and there’s the familiar darkness, creeping at the edges of his vision. He feels Yachi’s hand on his arm and he realizes he’s taken a step forward. 

“We have just heard from him, barely a day or two ago-”

“He is dead.” The servants shift uncomfortably, shocked at the disrespect of the interruption. The Kings stiffen. Hinata narrows his eyes at the agitated slope of the man’s shoulders. “I’m sorry, I don’t know who he is. I just- his name is in my head. He is dead, I know it with as much certainty as I know my previous statements.” That proud dark head bows, the voice lowers. “Which isn’t a lot.”

“What do you mean?” To the visitor Sugawara must sound kind and reassuring, but Hinata and anyone else in the room who knows him well at all can hear the faint edge in his words. 

Kageyama Tobio shrugs a little helplessly, but doesn’t answer. 

“You’re not sure of your name? Or your species? And you expect us to trust your word of the death of one of the most famed magicians in every world?” Tsukishima’s voice is cold and sharp. Hinata had briefed Tsukishima on Hoshi’s death a few hours ago, but there is no way this stranger would know of it. Hinata, and he could tell Tsukishima, too, is immediately distrustful. Kageyama turns to him and Hinata can see his smooth profile, the pale slope of a nose, long lashes. “Explain yourself.” The Kings watch with nearly identical assessing expressions, waiting.

Those fragile hands twist in his cloak, his throat bobs as he swallows. “I’m sorry, that’s all I- that’s all I  _ know.  _ I just. There’s a wall…” The pride that carried him into the throne room is crumbling away as Hinata watches. The darkness is retreating. “There’s a wall in my mind. All I remember is standing on the steps of your castle, and that- the  _ knowledge,  _ I just  _ knew,  _ my name is Kageyama Tobio. I’m an  _ Antari,  _ whatever the f-” he hesitates. “And that Hoshiumi Kōrai is dead. I don’t know who that is. I don’t know what an  _ Antari  _ is. I don’t even- I don’t know.”

Hinata and everyone present can hear his uncertainty, and the words that he’s held back.  _ I don’t even know if that’s really my name.  _

Daichi and Tsukishima share a glance, and Sugawara nods. “Kageyama Tobio, we have no way of knowing what you say is true, and I’m assuming you do not either.” Daichi sits back on his throne, and Sugawara steps down, approaching Kageyama with his palms spread. “There is, however, one piece of information we can test.”

Kageyama flinches back, but Sugawara only smiles reassuringly. “Come with me. We will test your abilities with our head scholar of magic. There is no need to worry.”

“This meeting is dismissed.” Daichi nods at Tsukishima. “Tsukishima will determine a servant to keep an eye on our visitor. Return to your duties.”

Sugawara leads Kageyama out of the throne room, a careful hand over his shoulders that Hinata knows is tense, prepared to defend if the newcomer makes a sudden move. The servants stand up straight as Tsukishima approaches, their confusion masked with professional stoicism, but Hinata already knows Tsukishima’s decision. Though something inside him dreads the words as they come. “Hinata Shouyou. You will be Kageyama’s personal servant for the remainder of his stay in the castle.”

Truly, he  _ knows  _ Tsukishima’s logic. This pseudo  _ Antari,  _ this mystery delivered on the castle steps. Who better to keep an eye on him than a highly trained spy? He can’t explain it though, there’s just something repelling him from the man. Nothing as shallow as straightforward repulsion, but a bone deep feeling that he should get as far away from him as possible. The darkness, the pride, the  _ wrongness. _

Hinata bows. “Yes, sir.”

Tsukishima meets his eyes, and Hinata knows what he is asking. “Prepare a room for our guest.”  _ Go with Suga. _

...

It smells like mothballs. 

The space Hinata has squeezed his small but not  _ that  _ small body in is cramped and thick with dust and debris that have probably been there even when the castle was new. His knees are folded up against his chest as he leans forward, arms curled in, taking up very little space in the narrow gap, but somehow he just feels too large, like things would be so much easier if he were the size of a mouse.

He’s wedged in between the floor of the third level and the ceiling of the second level of the castle, where there’s a cramped opening between the floorboards and a very convenient row of decorative holes in the walls so he can breathe and hear what’s happening in the second level room. The opening stretches around several rooms of the second floor, but there are irritating pieces of wood blocking off the tunnel into sections, intended to support the castle foundation, and also serving to make Hinata’s spywork a lot harder.

Hinata is squeezed into one of these sections in the wall, where he was able to enter by the Hinata-sized holes he’d burned in the wood years ago, and he peers into the room at the King and the dark haired visitor. 

The room is actually a suite, connected to several smaller chambers branching out, and the main space is cluttered and crowded with artifacts and unidentifiable objects littering the random arrangement of desks and tables throughout the room. There isn’t a clear surface anywhere in sight. Papers and ink stains and nondescript bags of herbs and worn boxes fill every inch of available space, some in piles so high it’s hard to even tell what they are. From the ceiling hangs an alarmingly extensive collection of dreamcatchers and gauzy curtains and windchimes that tinkle in the windowless room. The walls are the weathered wood, as opposed to the painted stone of the rest of the castle, and the air, which should have been musty and thick without ventilation, is crisp and clear. 

This is Yamaguchi Tadashi’s domain.

The head scholar of magic is buried in a corner of the room, where Kageyama and Sugawara haven’t noticed him yet. Hinata smiles fondly at the rumpled head of dark green camouflaged behind a wooden desk piled high with papers. Yamaguchi has noticed them, aside from Hinata, but Hinata knows he’s only building up the courage to reveal himself. 

“Yamaguchi?”

Yamaguchi shoots up from his hiding spot, disrupting the papers and causing a loud crash that makes both him and Kageyama flinch. He offers the King a sheepish smile and a bow. “Your Majesty.” He steps forward, smoothly maneuvering around clusters of junk and misplaced furniture with the ease of familiarity.

Sugawara returns his greeting with a soft smile of his own, waving away Yamaguchi’s over formality. “Good morning, Tadashi. We’re sorry to bother you, but this is a matter of importance. You still have the tools for the magic test I assume?”

When Hinata had first come to the castle at five years old, he’d been ushered into this very room, where a gentle man tried to coax his magic out of him and he had met a very small boy hiding from behind his father’s legs. Hinata had never met anyone his age before, and had jumped on the opportunity to make a friend. The other boy was timid and shy, but through the years Hinata had watched him become the intelligent, still slightly timid but not as much, man he is now, standing tall before the King. Yamaguchi, clearly in his element, beams. “Of course! Give me just a second please, Your Majesty.”

Yamaguchi hurries into one of the connected chambers. Hinata shifts in his position to ease the crampedness in his limbs, cursing the lack of the usual hidden passageways in this wing of the castle, which resulted in Hinata having to use this extremely uncomfortable method of spying. He hopes Yamaguchi will hurry.

Sugawara turns to Kageyama as they wait. “Yamaguchi will test to see which elemental magic you possess, and if it’s true that you possess all of them. The process is entirely painless. Don’t worry if the results don’t come back the way you expect. We will find a way to help you regain your memories.” His voice is smooth and calming, and Hinata can tell from the slight drop of Kageyama’s shoulders that the reassurance is working. “All you have to do is relax.”

Yamaguchi returns balancing four bowls in his arms, carefully stepping around the clutter to reach Sugawara and Kageyama in the center. He places the bowls over the stacks of paper on the nearest desk. “I’m sorry for the mess-”

“You say that every time I visit, Tadashi, and it’s always fine,” Sugawara laughs.

“Right,” Yamaguchi blushes. “Okay, here’s the test. It may be a little stale, but it will work fine, it won’t affect the results. Um. Is this for- you wanted to use it on-”

“This is Kageyama Tobio,” Sugawara answers, placing a hand on Kageyama’s back to gently guide him forward. Kageyama bows his head. “He is a visitor. Daichi and I would like to know what magic he possesses.”

Yamaguchi bows in greeting as well. “It’s nice to meet you, Kageyama. I am Yamaguchi Tadashi.” He turns to the table in front of them and arranges the bowls in a line. From Hinata’s vantage point he can see the contents of each bowl, the soil, the flint, the water, the sand. There’s nothing magic about them, nothing outright special. They’re just pieces of nature, that’s it. But they’re also catalysts. “Please step forward to the first bowl.”

Kageyama obeys, his expression flat. “What do I do.”

“Just lift your hand over the bowl, like this,” Yamaguchi hovers his palm over the bowl with the soil, and then lets his arm drop back to his side. “It will give you a tug, but only very slightly. You must pull it forth.” Yamaguchi glances at the King. “If you do not feel a tug, please let us know.”

Hinata knows this process. He knows what it feels like to be faced with four bowls of innocuous materials, being asked to call upon something buried inside him. He was only five, but he can remember glimpses of faded memories, of the cool hum of energy, the buzzing in his fingertips.  _ A gentle heat. And then, so suddenly, the raging fire, his blood boiling, stop him, he’s too young, there’s a wailing in his ears and maybe it’s coming from him but it’s so hot and it’s so cold, and there’s bottomless chasm opening from under his feet, a black void, reaching up with midnight fingers, there’s nothing stopping him from falling through- _

“There you go.” A tiny tendril of pale green reaches to wrap around Kageyama’s finger.

_ Sunlight pierces his mind, something thick and dark green spills over the table, wraps around his legs, trapped, trapped. _

“That’s it, to the next one.” Water stutters around Kageyama’s fingertips, swirling gently in the bowl.

_ He’s drowning. Wave upon wave, choking him, screams ripped from his throat swallowed by the cold hiss of the ocean.  _

The sand lifts easily under Kageyama’s palm, weakly. A faint breath of air shifting the grains.

_ Wind whips through orange hair. He throws his head back, gasping. It howls around him, lifting his feet off the ground, he can’t breathe, it’s so cold.  _

_ But that’s not even the worst of it. _

Under Kageyama’s hand is a tiny spark, a harmless lick of flame.

_ In Hinata’s mind’s eye, the fire roars. _

_ I’m sorry, he wants to say, please help me. He doesn’t know if anyone is still there, the kind man, the King with the calm voice, the little boy like him who is his new friend, where are they? Please let them be safe, I’m so sorry. _

_ The world around him burns. Light is screaming from his very soul. Darkness lies just out of reach. He doesn’t know which way to go. _

_ The dark is bad, the light is good. _

_ But why does it  _ hurt  _ so much? _

Shh, shh.

_ Please. Please let it be over. _

_ The earth thunders up in dark green whips, the ocean drowns him with wave after wave, the air wails and chokes away his breath, the fire burns and burns. And the light pierces him like an arrow, blinds him, overwhelms him. _

Shouyou.

_ This is something he remembers in stark clarity. A man melting from the darkness, a man with yellow and black hair and sharp golden eyes. He remembers the whisper of calm, the echo of hands reaching out to sooth his skin. The light that had seared him, hurt him, drew back. Balance. Light calmed by the dark. It didn’t leave him, only softened into a warmth that wrapped him in safety. _

_ He remembers falling. _

_ He remembers the aftermath in bits and pieces. The gaping hole he created in the side of the castle, giant dead vines spilling out into the courtyard. Water had flooded the entire wing, and there were angry burn marks on the walls. Everyone is safe, they told him, it wasn’t your fault. But he heard anyway: dangerous, uncontrollable, wild, stop him.  _

_ The tiny, much too small for his age, boy knelt at a King’s feet and cried. _

“Looks like you were right, Kageyama!”

Hinata blinks back to the present, surprised to find his vision slightly blurred with tears. He hates having those memories drudged up. The wooden beams sealing him in the cramped space are the result of that outburst fifteen years ago, the hasty repairs done in secrecy to prevent the public from ever finding out about what transpired there. Yamaguchi had told him once that it was like he was a god that day.  _ “Your eyes were glowing, kind of? Like there was a light inside of you, coming out.” _

“It looks like Kageyama Tobio is our new  _ Antari.” _

…

This rude son of a bitch cannot be the new  _ Antari. _

After Kageyama had been tested, they had talked over the power with him, calmly explaining about the history of the magic and the abilities he would have to hone. Hinata had dutifully gone to Daichi, who was with Tsukishima, and confirmed Kageyama’s species. Tsukishima had released him to go do what he had originally told Hinata the servant to do: serve Kageyama, the newest guest in the castle.

He was alone in a guest chamber when Hinata arrived, and Sugawara was just leaving. He had nodded to Hinata as they passed each other. Sugawara’s eyes said that while the visitor had been truthful, they were to still be on guard. A mystery of  _ Antari  _ sized proportions is never good, Hinata can attest to that. Hinata’s answering nod had said,  _ I will do my duty as both a simple servant and as the protector of this city, and make sure this mystery will not bring harm.  _

And Hinata had walked into the room, a bright, innocent smile on his face, and been smacked in the face by something warm and dusty. “I don’t need a servant. Just get out and leave me alone.” Kageyama hadn’t even looked at him. “Wash my cloak.”

So, this rude son of a bitch  _ cannot _ be the new  _ Antari. _

Hinata doesn’t care what the hell Sugawara and Daichi think, obviously this rotten personality is a  _ danger  _ to the city, a danger to the whole entire world, and Hinata wants him out,  _ now.  _ “That’s not the way you’re supposed to talk to someone! Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to be  _ polite?” _

Kageyama stiffens, and he turns to him. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to act like a servant? You’re not supposed to talk back to me. I’m a guest.” He lifts his nose. 

Hinata shoves the cloak at his feet, indignant rage welling up. He is  _ this close  _ to stomping his foot like a child. “Is it so hard for you to be polite, really? You can order someone nicely, you know! Maybe say please!”

“It doesn’t matter, you have to listen to me anyway.” Kageyama turns away, going over to sit in a desk chair by the tall window, like Hinata isn’t worth any more of his time. He doesn’t appear very bothered. “Leave me alone, servant.”

Hinata wants to punch him. Yes, a good punch, send him straight out the second story window into the gardens. Maybe that will wipe that smug look off his face. 

Of course, the Kings would fire him immediately, regardless of his secret identity. It will look very suspicious if they allow a misbehaving servant to remain in work for no apparent reason. Damn it, Hinata really needs to watch his tongue.

But, that has never been his strong suit. “You’re not my King! You’re just a visitor! You’re in foreign land, you should be more polite!”

“It doesn’t even matter. You’re just a servant. Leave me alone.”

“Servants deserve some respect, too, we’re still people!”

“Whatever. Get out.”

“Fine! I don’t want to be your damn servant anyway!” Hinata whirls back around and stomps out the door, kicking aside the lump of fabric on the floor.  _ Wait, damn it.  _ He  _ has  _ to be his servant, it’s more than just that. He needs to make sure this new  _ Antari  _ is not a threat. Damn it, damn it. Hinata stops, grits his teeth. 

“Why are you just standing there? Forgot where the door is? Right in front of you, dumbass.”

In this moment, Hinata hates everything and everyone in his life that brought him to this. “I apologize for my earlier outburst, it-”  _ Think of the city, Hinata. Protect the city.  _ “It was inappropriate of me.”

“Damn right.”

“Shut up!” Hinata spins around, glaring. “Fine, you don’t have a nice bone in your body, but I still have to be your servant, like it or not. I’ll wash your damn cloak! I’ll bring your damn food! Do your laundry! Clean! I’ll do everything I’m supposed to, so suck it up, you’ve got a servant!”

Shit.

Kageyama blinks at him. Hinata straightens up, bows, and is halfway out the door when, “You forgot my cloak.”

As he stomps away, cloak in hand and anger still simmering beneath his skin, Hinata silently declares it a win. 

Shame he couldn’t have just gone with the punching him out the window idea, though.

…

Later, once Hinata had washed the asshole’s cloak and brought him a very much undeserved dinner, he slips into Tsukishima’s office. 

“I know I’m supposed to spy on him as a servant but he’s making it really hard to be polite and servant-y to him, he’s almost as big of an asshole as you-” Hinata ignores Tsukishima’s narrowed eyes, “-and yeah, he’s an  _ Antari  _ and whatever, but honestly he’s just going to offend all the Crowns if he goes off on missions. You didn’t see him, Tsuki, he’s like a bully!”

“You better be glad I’m ignoring that earlier comment about me being an asshole. I’m not as immature as you.” Tsukishima tilts his head, smirking. “Sounds like he really put you in your place. Good, can’t have you growing a big ego, after all.”

“What, like yours?” Hinata spits back, crossing his arms. He  _ almost  _ sticks out his tongue. 

“What are you even doing here, Hinata, you’re supposed to be watching him.” Tsukishima adjusts his glasses and turns back to the papers on his desk. “Is your ego so big already that you think you don’t have to do your job?”

“I’m going to! I just! He’s just so- I don’t want-” 

“Use your words, Hinata.”

“I don’t want to be his servant!” Hinata scowls, coming right up to the edge of Tsukishima’s desk and slapping his palms down. “I’ll still spy and whatever, but ask someone else to clean his stuff and bring him food!”

“And let just anyone in on the fact that we have an unknown  _ Antari  _ cooped up in our guest chambers? Are you really that stupid?” The smirk hasn’t left his face, and for the second time that day Hinata wants to rip someone’s face off. “Look, even once he doesn’t have to be hidden anymore, once we can reveal him to the public, it’s the safest option to have you be by his side every day. Get in close. Make sure he is, and stays, trustworthy. He doesn’t seem all that powerful from what Yamaguchi reported about the test, but that could also mean he has a handle on his power, meaning he was trained. Make sure that whoever did train him, whoever he’s working for, isn’t a threat to the kingdom.”

Hinata sighs, rolling his eyes up to the ceiling. “I know, I’ve already thought of all of that. I’m not actually stupid, Tsukki.”

“Sure you’re not,” Tsukishima patronizes, but they both know it’s just an act. “Go do your job, Hinata. Just a few hours in the walls, and then sleep.”

Hinata finds himself in one of the old passages he’d found years ago, peering into the room Kageyama is staying in from his hidden vantage point. He quickly realizes that this is going to be extremely boring.

Kageyama sits at the desk and stares at his hands.

He goes over to the bed and presses his face into the pillows (sometimes he turns and looks at the ceiling).

He sits on the floor and rubs the carpet under his fingers.

And then he goes back over to the desk and repeats the process.

This happens around thirty times, and by the thirty second round Hinata is ready to reveal himself just to scream at him. Who the hell is this man? He isn’t  _ doing  _ anything. Not that there’s really much to do. The room is pretty bare, save some papers and pens on the desk, and an oil lamp. He’s not sure what he expected the man to do, maybe draw or go out and explore the castle, but not wander around like a  _ machine. _

Hinata shifts in his hiding spot and a jolt of soreness shoots up his leg. He’s no stranger to being cramped, but he’s about to go out of his mind if Kageyama doesn’t do something  _ right now.  _ Even just write a letter, draw a picture. Sugawara had told him to relax while the court discussed how to progress with his newfound nature, so Hinata expected maybe some magic practice? But he has not seen the man so much as make a pen float.

Hinata’s just about to unfold himself and head back to his room when a flash of orange catches his eye. Kageyama is staring in shock at his fingertip, where a very tiny slip of flame dances. His forehead breaks into a sweat, and he narrows his eyes in concentration.

Then, Hinata watches as it  _ spills. _

“No, damn it,” Kageyama whispers as it spreads down his arm, across his body. “Stop it.”

The fire doesn’t listen to him. 

It spreads around his feet, eating away the carpet. Smoke begins to clog Hinata’s sinuses as the heat rises. He isn’t trained then? Why can’t he stop the fire? 

Kageyama shakes his head furiously, falling to his knees. Hinata slips out of his hiding spot, loathe to leave Kageyama unattended but if he wants his lungs intact he’s got to get out of there. He races down the passage, thinking. If Kageyama can’t control his fire, and Hinata can’t reveal his abilities, they’re going to need someone else to stop the spread. Someone with water magic.

_ Suga. _

It takes him seconds to find him. Sugawara takes one look at the urgency on Hinata’s face, and follows. The fire has spread to the entrance to the guest wing, slowed by the stone of the castle. The hall is blocked by a wall of flame, heat billowing in Hinata’s face as they get closer. Hinata can’t hear Kageyama at all. As much as hates the rude son of a bitch, he can’t help but hope the guy is alright.

“Step back, Hinata.” Sugawara spreads his palms, and water slams into the wall of fire, extinguishing the flames in a hiss of smoke. They stride forward, towards Kageyama’s room. The door is gaping wide, the scorched pieces of wood falling off its hinges. Hinata can just make out a thin slip of darkness in the center of the fire.  _ Kageyama.  _ He blinks, and the fire surrounding him flashes black. 

Kageyama’s arms wrap tight around himself, and his eyes are squeezed shut, like he’s concentrating. His head is bowed, dark hair falling forward to shield his face. “Kageyama!”

Kageyama doesn’t look up, and the flames only lick higher, scorching the ceiling. Fire surges from his body, rolling off his skin in bright waves, crashing through the doorway as an ocean of flames. The magic brings him to his knees. He throws his head back, throat bared, and his black hair lifts around it, like it’s floating in the sea of fire.

And then.

His midnight eyes snap open and lock on Hinata’s.

_ Pain, terror. _

_ He’s consumed with fire, choking on the sea. The world is screaming around him. Hinata remembers, he remembers. _

_ He knows. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That chapter definitely ran away from me! Hope you enjoyed!   
> For some reason college is making me want to write more? Updates should be twice a month then! Also, don't worry, the tags will start to make more sense (Everything's planned out ;))
> 
> \- Chapter title is from Black Hole Sun, by Soundgarden, like the title of this fic!


	3. boiling heat, summer stench

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tsukki is going to kill him for losing their Antari.

So small. 

He remembers that he was so small. He hadn’t noticed him at first, tucked away in Kenma’s cold shadows. No one was supposed to be here, especially not a child. This was a place of darkness and death, and the little mop of bright hair and scrawny limbs was horrifyingly out of place. 

He had come from nowhere. Kenma had been watching, resting alone in the familiar darkness, and then his gaze had caught on a flash of orange, like the child had been there all along. The lights from the city below illuminated his two toned gaze as it landed on Kenma. Gold, black. Glittering with tears. 

“Hello,” the child whispered, bottom lip trembling. There was fear in the child’s eyes, but it was old and resigned, like it was directed not at Kenma but at something else entirely. 

Kenma had not felt much in the past years. Everything had always been cold and dark and empty. But in this moment, facing a tiny, tear-streaked face, Kenma felt something. 

He slid out of the darkness, tilting his head. “You are not supposed to be here.”

The child nodded, and turned his head to look up at the foggy black sky. “I’m sorry. I’m… I’m lost.” He faced him again, wiping his face with the heels of his palms. “It’s really cold and scary and I don’t know how to get home.”

“How did you get here?” Kenma asked, but he already knew.

“With the magic. But the magic is so _mean_ and it _hurts,_ I don’t want to use it ever. And I forgot how to get back home.” The child let out a little sob. “I want to go home.”

That black eye, the one that met Kenma’s own and stared back with untamed power and something inherently _other._ The streak of blood on the child’s hands, smeared on his face from his rubbing. And, now that Kenma paid closer attention, the bright hum of magic charging the atmosphere around them, through Kenma’s darkness. 

“Come with me,” Kenma was saying before he could stop himself. He wasn’t sure why, not with the cold emptiness weaving through his very being, but he couldn’t stand the tears and hopelessness on the child’s face. The child had to get out of here. He didn’t belong in the dark.

The child shakily stood, hugging himself tightly. He was trembling, either from the cold or fear, Kenma couldn’t tell. Probably a mix of both. “Will you help me?”

Kenma stayed silent. The child was looking up at him, eyes huge and otherworldly, and around them the sounds of the city were carried on the wind from below. From this high up, the wind whipped the child’s bright hair harshly, threatening to blow away his tiny body. But Kenma’s entire form remained eerily still, like he was separated from the world. 

“You will be very cold, but I can bring you back to the warmth,” Kenma said finally. “I will take you down to the city.”

The child nodded quickly, offering a hesitant, wobbly smile as Kenma came closer. “Okay, sir, thank you.”

“My name is Kenma.”

“Yes, Kenma, sir.”

Kenma huffed softly, and lifted the child into his arms. The child immediately started trembling, curling tighter in on himself as Kenma’s cold darkness blanketed them. Kenma made sure to turn the child’s face into his chest, shielding his view as Kenma stepped off the edge of the roof.

When Kenma gently set the child down on the ground, they had landed at the base of the building, floors and floors below the high rise. It was quiet, and empty, but not because it was night. The glass in the windows reflected the lights in the city around them, but the building itself was dark and looming. It had been this way for five years.

“You can fly!” 

Kenma turned back down to the small child. His earlier sadness was almost completely wiped away, replaced by a look of unabashed awe, shining brightly in his huge eyes. “We fell. I just made sure you were safe in the fall.”

A flash of disappointment flitted across his face, but it was gone in an instant. “Oh! But that’s still really cool anyway! Is it magic?”

Kenma blinked. He lifted his face beyond the child, turning towards the street. None of the small number of passersby were paying any mind to them, and the lights were few enough that Kenma could remain tangible, for the most part. He was too far from the source to take any real form. A car drove by, it’s engine growing louder and then fading as it went past. Kenma had just let out a sigh of relief when the child suddenly dove behind his leg, hands grabbing to grip on Kenma, but passing through the shadow. 

Kenma looked down in confusion. The child was staring in shock at the now empty street, white fists tucked at his chest, his small mouth slightly open. “That’s a car.”

His little brow furrowed, and he peered up at Kenma helplessly. “A car?”

So he wasn’t from Grey Tokyo at all, then. Kenma had figured the little _Antari_ had accidentally Transferred himself on top of the roof from wherever he was in the city, but instead he had come from an entirely different world. That was alright, he decided. Kenma had spent more than enough time in every world.

“Yes, a car. A machine. You have horses and carriages in your city. This city has cars.” Kenma waited as the child processed the information. “What do you know about the worlds?”

The child’s face screwed up in thought. “Suga says my home is Red Tokyo. We’re close to the magic. He says I don’t need to worry about being too far away from the magic because I have magic inside me, but I don’t want magic inside me, I want to get far away! But it follows me around.” 

“Yes,” Kenma said, placing a hand on his small shoulder and steering him closer to the dark safety of the building. He stopped a few feet from the start of the rubble, which was blocked off with years old police tape, and kneeled down to be face to face with the child. “There’s your world. Red. Magical. Then there is this world. This is Grey. This city is also called Tokyo. There is no magic here.”

The child’s eyes widened. “Oh, I remember! And White only has a little bit of magic.”

“Yes. Red is the closest to the source of the magic, so it has the most.” Kenma bit his lip. He didn’t want to give the child false information, but they didn’t have a lot of time to waste going over the old stories, and Kenma didn’t want to bombard him with too much at once. “White is the second closest, so it has less magic. Grey is the farthest, so it has none. But the people learned to live without magic, and so they have things like cars and phones and electric lights.” Kenma gestured to the streetlamps and the passing cars. “It’s a different kind of magic they created for themselves.”

If possible, the child’s eyes had gotten even wider. “Wow! Is it nice magic?”

“Sometimes.”

“That’s so cool! I want to see the magic!”

“Maybe later. You have to go home, remember?” Kenma stood, watching the child’s face fall. “Your magic can bring you back here whenever you want, and you can see Grey’s magic then, okay?”

“Okay!” The child perked up, and then looked down again, that old fear rising to the surface. “But my magic... I don’t like it. It hurts. It can hurt Suga, or Daichi, or Tsukki. I don’t want to hurt anybody!”

Kenma froze. Years and years, separated by time and space itself, and those words, or words like them, came back. _I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to hurt anyone._ He couldn’t remember what he had said, but the answer came to him now, like it had always been there. “Learn to control it. Don’t let it control you. Learn to use it correctly, and your magic can be your friend.”

The child contemplated this, small brow lowered. “A friend…”

“Let’s get you home now, okay?” Kenma watched the emotions flit across the child’s face, nothing he could make out other than simple curiosity. “Here, take some of this blood off your hands.”

Kenma cupped the child’s tiny hands in his own, and gently dragged a shadowy finger across his palm, lifting some of the drying blood onto his fingertips. The child, for his part, barely flinched at the pain. “Draw this symbol to Travel to other worlds.” He felt the child’s attentive gaze on him as he traced the symbol on the steel wall of the building’s entrance. The blood was glossy and dark against the metal. “And you have your token from when you came in?”

“Token…? My coin?” The child blinked up at him, and then dug in his pocket. He pulled out a tarnished red coin.

“Hold onto it. Step forward, and it will take you home.”

Kenma stepped aside, allowing the child to step forward towards the wall. The symbol was nearly invisible as the blood dried and darkened, but Kenma felt its magic pulse lightly in the air. He had not thought the magic would work so close to the building, no other magic did. But this boy was magic itself, and his blood was more than enough to fill the magicless void. Kenma could already feel the darkness retreating from this small corner of the dead spot. 

The child’s eyes were huge as they stared up at Kenma. He wanted to look away but found he could not. “Won’t you come with me?”

“Yes,” he was saying before he could stop himself. That sort of thing was happening more and more around this strange child. “I’ll be there waiting on the other side.”

The child nodded, satisfied. With renewed confidence, he stepped forward, and Kenma melted into the darkness between the worlds.

The city lights and noise of Grey Tokyo were silenced, and in its place was quiet daylight, brushing down from a blushing sky. The darkness throbbed in that same space, though, darker and denser than in the previous world. A building stood, but it was smaller, did not reach the clouds. Kenma wondered how the child had got to the roof of the building in Grey, if the Travel spell had spat him out several floors below. Had the magic misfired? Dropped him beside Kenma for no other reason besides fate?

“You’re human!”

The child, newly emerged from the portal that Kenma had helped create for him, was gaping at him. Oh, yes. He was more solid in Red Tokyo. The darkness was thicker here, stronger. It shaped him into something closer to what he once was. “I’m not human.” _Anymore._

“But you look human! Your hair is different colors! That’s so cool!” The child bounced on his toes, his bloodstained hands curled into excited fists. “I want different colors too!”

Kenma turned his gaze to the castle in the distance, standing tall and proud and red on the hill, as he said absently, “Your eyes are different colors.”

The child was quiet, and then, “Oh! Yes!” He placed his hands over his eyes. He seemed to think something over, and then he looked up at Kenma. “Why are you colorful now? Why are you not human? Are you a ghost?”

 _Darkness falling from the sky, rising from the ocean. The spray of sea salt and gold eyes locked on gold. A name on the tip of his tongue as the shadows swallowed the world._ “More like an echo. Like something that once existed, and all that’s left is a memory. An empty shell.” The child opened his mouth, but Kenma waved a hand, dismissing any other questions. “You can find your way back, now, right?” The castle loomed on the horizon.

“Yes! Thank you, Kenma!” The child turned to run off, and then stopped, looked back over his shoulder at Kenma with a slight frown. “I didn’t say my name! My name is Hinata Shouyou. Thank you for helping me!”

The child, Hinata Shouyou, ran off down the street, away from the dark plaguing the area Kenma stood, and towards the sun glittering on the edge of the horizon. Kenma watched him go, feeling warmer than he’d had in many, many years. 

Like he’d been in the dark for so long, and had only just now opened a window to let a little ray of light through.

…

One moment he is drowning in fire, and the next he is a crumpled pile on the scorched floor, feeling a lot like a soggy rat. 

Soaked black hair drips onto the stone under his bowed head. He coughs, and water spills from his lips. His hands are splayed out under him, barely holding him up, and he’s shaking like a leaf. It’s so cold. Something inside him that was angry and snarling a moment before has been extinguished. He can’t feel it anymore, but he knows it must still be there. 

He’s afraid to lift his head. 

Voices murmur around him, but none of their words are directed at him so he blocks them out. He coughs again, a strangled sound that makes the voices stop. Warm hands wrap under his arms and lift him. He still can’t look up.

“It’s okay, Kageyama.”

There is nothing okay about this.

“You’re okay now.”

Is he?

The remainder of the day passes in a blur. He can’t focus on anything, he snaps to attention more than a few times after he fails to answer a question directed at him, or wanders away in the middle of someone’s sentence. He doesn’t speak more than a few words at a time. Faces and voices blend together. A dark haired man guides him to a different room; he might be the King but Kageyama cannot focus enough to be sure. A silver haired man is with him, and he says he stopped the fire. He says they can help him learn to control his magic. Kageyama stops listening after that.

The only thing that breaks through the hazy fog that has fallen over his mind is something small and orange right under his nose. Snapping at him to finish the food left on the plate so he can take it back to the kitchens. The servant, right. Hair so bright and voice so loud Kageyama can’t ignore him. He blinks slowly.

“Are you even done?”

Kageyama drops his gaze, feeling uncertain. Done? Done eating? He hadn’t even noticed the plate of food on the table. Is he hungry? His stomach feels...tight. Knotted. He can’t eat. “Yes.”

The orange haired servant huffs and takes a step back out of Kageyama’s space. Kageyama’s eyes follow him. “Good. You know, you’re not being as much of an asshole as you were when I first came here.”

Something twitches in Kageyama. “I wasn’t an asshole.”

“You definitely were.”

“I _wasn’t._ Maybe you’re just oversensitive.” Kageyama vaguely realizes this is the most aware he’s been the entire day. He shifts in his seat at the window, looking away pointedly, towards the darkening sky. “You’re still pretty lousy for a servant, too, you know.”

He can hear the servant’s teeth grinding in frustration. “Look, I heard something happened a few hours ago. News travels fast, and whatnot. I get you’re going through some things. It’s no excuse to be rude, but I get some people cope differently-”

“Shut up.” Kageyama glares at the window, feeling the other’s hardening stare from the corner of his eye. “You don’t have any idea what’s going on. Get out.”

“I’m just saying that-”

“I don’t care. Get out.”

The door slams on his way out. 

Kageyama lets out a breath, looking down at his hands. They look so harmless. Smooth and slender, soft and delicate. 

He hadn’t even thought about it very hard. Just a small curiosity, a flicker of an idea, and then there was a tiny lick of fire on his finger. He’d been so fascinated, excited. And then, so quickly, the fire had spread, and burned him away.

He curls his fingers into fists and balls them up in his lap. The fear is still there, freezing his lungs, blocking off his magic with a desperately tight hold. He can’t let it slip again. He won’t touch it. The Kings of this land want his magic, he knows. From what he gathered, they’d lost a very important magician with his same capabilities, and they want him to fill the spot. 

Was it a coincidence? That he’d been dropped on the castle steps so soon after the last magician’s death? There’s no way it could be. Apparently magicians like him and the other were rare, and he’d only come a few _hours_ after the other’s death. Well. He hadn’t come exactly.

That’s something he doesn’t want to think about. _And suddenly, he exists. Three pulsing thoughts burned into his mind._

Something dark catches his eye in his peripherals. The thick black cloak he came in, lying newly cleaned on the bed. He approaches it slowly, feeling like he’s missing something. _He’s missing a lot of things._ The fabric is soft under his cold hands. He wraps it around himself, a lavender scent enveloping him, and he feels his muscles loosen as he curls into the strange familiarity. He sighs softly. 

The last bits of sun are chased away by the night, and Kageyama falls asleep above the covers on the bed, wrapped in the no longer dusty cloak. He dreams of nothing.

…

Hinata presses his finger deeper into the wall as he completes the drawing. He lets out a sigh, watching the balcony around him fade away into the familiar open rooftop. He’d wanted to give Hoshiumi a proper burial, or at least move his body somewhere more honorable than where it was left on the rooftop in White, but when Hinata had got there the body was gone. He expected that; the White Crown knew of his death somehow, and they probably went to retrieve it. He’d thought no one (no one normal at least) could enter the dead spots, but he had thought a lot of things in the past few hours that were quickly proving to be false. 

The night is just barely lifting, pale white and blue light brushing away the dark. The pink will spread across the sky soon, followed by the telltale crimson that is referenced every time someone speaks of this world. Crisp wind rushes past Hinata, but he can’t feel it through the fabric of his full body uniform. He’s sweating a little. Summer is approaching, and along with it the warmth of the sun, a blissful reprieve from the chilly spring. 

He crouches closer to the edge of the roof, making himself smaller, a tiny black dot invisible against the still dark skyline. Below him is his beloved city. Tall spires, piercing high, higher than he is now, and the streets of centuries old ornate structures that have stood tall and watched history go by. The early risers milling about, the horses and carriages shuffling lazily down the streets, the noise and steady bustle of the fading quiet as the city awakens. 

Hinata loves his city with all his heart. More than the beautiful, complex lights and billboards of Grey Tokyo, or the proud, regal monuments of White Tokyo. Even the electric magic of Grey can’t compare to the warm thrum of magic in Red Tokyo’s air, breathed into the world like life itself. Hinata releases some of his magic like a sigh, letting it twine together with the ancient magic of the source. A tiny drop of water returning to the ocean. 

It grounds him. Connects him to his city, to the world. It feels like familiar and calming, like home, in a way that took him a long time to achieve. 

He will protect this city with everything he has.

Though the day is approaching, and soon his dark camouflage will be a stark contrast against a lightened sky, Hinata hesitates. It’s not that he doesn’t want to return to the castle. He wants to greet the lovely staff as he usually does in the mornings, chat with the baker about his new baby, ask the librarian about any new recommendations, drift through the market as it livens up throughout the day. He wants to pester Tsukki, or visit Tadashi, or spar with Daichi, or Suga. It’s all so routine, and he likes it that way. 

But there’s something off this time. He knows it has to be because of the newcomer. Hinata distrusts him with every fiber of his soul. Even his magic churns when he’s around him. But just yesterday, his face, the terror and pain and helplessness as his magic overwhelmed him- Hinata isn’t so sure what to think of him now. He’s still rude, still annoying, but Hinata _knows_ that feeling, he knows how it eats away at your confidence and self-assurance long after it’s gone, making you doubt your own magic, lose trust in yourself. He wouldn’t wish that on anybody.

Hinata lightly swings himself down the side of the building, steady hands gripping the pole working down the edge. The sky is brightening enough to illuminate the surrounding structures, but the building Hinata scales is a dead spot, blackened and the perfect camouflage for the pitch black uniform Hinata wears. 

He lands on the side of the building and immediately ducks behind it, emerging in a dusty alleyway shielded by the buildings around it from the morning sky. He’s about to lift his hood when he hears a muffled shout. 

“I don’t- I promise you, I don’t have it! I don’t know!” 

Hinata stifles a groan. _What’s so hard about being a decent human being?_ He’ll never understand. He follows the sound of the voice, and the answering yell, picking his way through the back alleys. He brushes aside a low hanging curtain strung up between the backs of the neighboring shops. Further up the alley are two people standing above a third, who is on the ground. 

“But you do! Why do you think we’re here? You’re leaking magic like a loose faucet! You have it, we need it, so hand it over.”

A drug deal? Doesn’t matter, Hinata stopped caring after the third one he came across. Things aren’t as interesting once you’ve had your fill. He leaps directly upwards, softly swinging himself up onto the low hanging ledge. The element of surprise isn’t much needed when you’re at his skill level, but he likes watching the looks on criminal’s faces when he drops out of thin air.

“Please! Please- I- I need it, you don’t understand, my family, I have- a wife, a daughter-”

“You don’t even know how to use it!”

The second man, who had been looking on quietly, speaks up, “Apologies, but this situation is urgent, and your time is up.”

 _So is yours,_ Hinata thinks, as he drops on his shoulders.

The man spins, metal flashing, but Hinata pushes himself up onto his feet on the man’s shoulders, quickly leaping up before he can fall. In the air, time slows. His heartbeat is calm. He’s twisting, and the man is ducking, but Hinata is the faster one of the two, and his knife slips from his hand with a snap of his wrist, slicing up towards the man’s throat. 

Hinata lands in a crouch, in time to see the other man, the one who had spoken first, snatch the knife out of the air before it can hit its target. Hinata’s already moving, slipping behind them before they can fully lay eyes on him. The man who now holds his knife whirls around with a growl.

From behind them, Hinata slams both palms onto the earth.

“Wait-”

“Bo-”

When the dust settles, both men have been brought to their knees in the dirt, vines and roots protruding out of the ground, wrapped around their bodies so tightly their limbs shake, backs arched, their necks forced up to bare their throats. One of them tries to move their fingers, mutter magic to counter Hinata’s, but the vines snap tighter, and they both groan. Their weapons lay forgotten on the ground beyond them.

Hinata smiles from behind his mask, wishing he could talk so he could congratulate the one who snatched his knife out of the air. It was a really cool move!

“Th-thank you!” the victim on the ground shouts, looking terrified. He glances quickly at the two men bound by the earth, and then stares in fascination at Hinata. “You’re- you’re the _Crow,_ aren’t you?” He fumbles around, patting his pocket, clearing his throat. He bows low to the ground. “Thank you.”

 _“You don’t-”_ one of the men growls, muscles straining. _“You’ve got it- all- wrong…”_

Hinata has readied himself to leap back up to the low roof of the store the alleyway is attached to, but he pauses, tilting his head in question. The man fixes him with an amber glare, fighting harder against the binds. _“That man- stole…”_

Hinata lifts an eyebrow even though they can’t see his expression. He turns to the victim, who has started to get to his feet and now freezes, visibly sweating, his face vaguely wild. Hinata narrows his eyes. The vines around the two men loosen without Hinata looking away from the victim, and the amber eyed man gasps, “That man! He stole something important, something very powerful! It’s dangerous in the wrong hands! You can’t let him escape!”

“He’s the criminal!” the victim - or, not a victim? - shouts, taking a step back. The ground under him trembles and he squeaks. “I didn’t- I don’t have anything, they want to rob me!”

“Just listen to us! You’re a strong magician, right, Black Suit? Like a hero, or something? Well, I’m telling you, it’s really, really important that that man gives back what he stole!”

“Don’t listen to him!” Vines snake up and wrap snugly around the man’s ankle before he can take another step back, and he trips, crying out as he falls on his ass. Something small and dark skids out of his pocket and onto the floor of the alley, glinting in the light slanting through the entrance. “No!”

Hinata steps forward as another vine wraps around the terrified man’s wrists, preventing him from reaching for the object. He bends down, hand outstretched to pick up what looks like a black pebble, but stops, swallowing a gasp.

“Don’t touch it!”

He isn’t sure who gave the warning, but he reels back, nausea climbing up his throat. What the hell is that thing? It feels- _rotten,_ his mind supplies. _Like poison._

“Look, just-”

He turns back to the trapped men, pushing down his revulsion. He doesn’t know what’s going on and that frustrates him. Hinata stomps over where the two men are held hostage by the earth, and the one with the amber eyes repeats, “Just listen to us, okay? You felt it, didn’t you? It’s- let Akaashi free and we can explain.”

Akaashi- the other man. Hinata loosens the magic enough to let him open his mouth. His eyes are flat and hard, distrustful. “This isn’t a good idea,” he says, but he’s talking to his companion. “He’s too powerful.”

The amber eyed man opens his mouth, but he’s interrupted.

 _“Please,_ I need it! I-” 

Hinata’s fingers twitch and the earth shoots out once again, caging the wailing man behind him in brambles and vines. It’s so abruptly strong that his body slams flat to the ground, face smothered in the dirt.

The two men in front of him blink up at him in mild shock, but he only stares back at them in silence. _He’s really tired, why couldn’t this have happened after his nap? This was just supposed to be a quick save, what the hell is going on, he’s too sleep deprived for this kind of complexity. He just wants to sleep. Nice, warm bed._

The two men look oddly intimidated.

The one named Akaashi says, after a beat, “Thank you for hearing us out, but you really don’t need to bother further, that stone is a family heirloom, stolen from us. It has our grandmother’s magic-”

Hinata steps forward, to what, he isn’t sure, but then the amber one interjects, “Wait! Akaashi, think about this. Someone this powerful, he could help us! Or, she?” He blinks curiously at the formless uniform Hinata wears. “Um, Black Suit? Look, hear us out, okay? Let us up?”

“Bokuto-san-”

“Akaashi, I know what I’m doing, just trust me.”

“I _trust you,_ I just don’t trust _them.”_

Anyone who has known Hinata for at least a few hours can conclude several things about him. None of those things involve patience, or prudence. He turns quickly and scoops up the black stone, fighting back the urge to vomit, and then he is moving past them before a plan can fully form in his mind, the vines binding the two men falling away. The other man is knocked out cold in the dirt so Hinata pays him no mind, but the other two he gestures at to follow him.

“What- oh, okay!”

“Bok-”

“C’mon, Akaashi, _trust me.”_

He hears them murmuring behind him, but he’s only vaguely listening. They go back and forth about whether or not to say anything to him, but he already knows how it will end so he keeps going, winding back around the alleyways he came until he’s back at the edge of the dead spot, hidden from view of the streets. Perfectly hidden, and no human would venture close enough to hear or see them. He tosses the black pebble towards the dead building, where they can’t reach. As the poison magic leaves his palm he nearly gasps in relief.

Hinata turns, wincing at the pale looks on their faces. The lack of magic doesn’t affect him, but to others it can be truly unbearable. He doesn’t make them actually step into the dead spot, but right on the edge where the ground is a darker shade, fading into the black. 

He gestures at them to begin.

It’s the amber eyed one, Bokuto, who starts, swallowing his obvious nausea. “My name is Bokuto Koutarou. This is Akaashi Keiji. That stone you had was given to us by-” Akaashi glares at his companion. “By a friend. It’s really important. See, we’re kind of the pirates, and-” another glare, “Privateers! We’re privateers. And it was sort of a delivery, kind of got mixed up into the wrong hands, you know how it is, anyway we need it back.”

Hinata is so tired.

Through a valiant effort of level headedness, something Tsukishima would be proud of, Hinata’s sure, Hinata refrains from ripping off his hood and yelling at the men to _stop lying please._

Instead he _does actually_ think things through, and then sends a prayer to the gods that Tsukishima never finds out what he’s about to do.

He lowers his voice to a scratchy drawl, hopefully a far cry from his normal tenor, and spits, _“The truth.”_

There’s a pause, a tense silence between the three men that makes Hinata’s heart race. There’s something bigger going on here, bigger than it looks at first glance. Nothing that could feel the way the black stone feels should ever exist, and if it does, there’s probably something very, very dangerous behind it. Something that could threaten Hinata’s city, and he will not let that happen.

Akaashi steps forward, his face impassive aside from the paleness due to the proximity of the dead spot. His gaze is hard, determined. It reminds Hinata suddenly of the height difference between him and the men, how they tower over him. It makes him restless. “You’re the Crow. The one they speak about, the night savior. You save people.”

Hinata does not answer. 

“Then you understand that we have to protect our own.” Akaashi glances toward the direction Hinata had tossed the stone out of their reach. “That stone, it’s very powerful, I know you can feel it. It holds enough magic to help us save some people that are very important to us. We need it back.”

Bokuto comes up next to him, offering a smile, “We’ve kind of, heard about you? You’re a good person. Please, just give it to us and let us save our friends.”

Hinata stares at them. He shifts his head in the direction of the stone, where he can still feel the trace of poisoned magic, and he realizes it’s not just _evil,_ it’s incredibly powerful. A knot of angry, ancient magic, dark and rotted. It makes Hinata want to curl up and hide far, far away from it.

And these men want to _use_ it. The dark power.

Hinata growls, lifting his arms, and the men can probably feel the atmosphere start to shift with his power, and they back away. _“What are you planning? I won’t let you hurt anyone."_

 _“Hurt?_ Hurt- we don’t want to hurt anyone! Wait, hey, calm down!” Bokuto waves his arms, as if attempting to stuff Hinata’s magic away. “It’s really powerful, we know, but we want to use it to _save_ people! We’re not going to use it for ourselves!”

Akaashi narrows his eyes distrustfully at Hinata’s spread arms. “We can prove it to you. Please, we are not lying.”

_“Dark magic is always evil, no matter what you do with it. You’re not touching that stone.”_

The men stare at him, and then glance at each other. Even Akaashi’s stoic expression is twisted in confusion. “It’s- really powerful, we know, but that doesn’t mean it’s evil, or dark…”

Hinata blinks at them, his arms falling to his sides. They don’t... feel it?

Bokuto visibly relaxes as Hinata’s magic fades. “Look, just, we can take you to our friend, he’ll tell you. We just got to use the magic in the stone somehow and save our friends-”

_“No.”_

Hinata looks up at the sky. It’s fully bright now, the morning carrying with it the slightest breeze. The sky blushes pink, and wispy clouds drift above them. It’s time for him to go. Well, it’s _been_ time for him to go, but now he _really_ needs to get back to the castle. He turns back to the two men, sighing. _“Please don’t try to get the stone. Find another way to save your friends. The magic in that stone is evil, and it will only bring harm to anyone who comes close to it. Please trust me about this.”_

“Evil? Just because it’s really, really powerful-”

_“It’s not just powerful. It’s dark magic. Black.”_

The silence hums between them. With that one word, they know, Hinata’s sure. Hopefully they understand. That the rotten, poisoned magic could have only come from one place. 

Hinata dips away from them, scampering into the dead spot before they can say anything. He quickly snatches the stone from the ground and ducks into the building, out of sight, twisting through the dark, empty hallways and the ruins. Wind howls through the gaps in the shattered windows, an eerie whistle humming through the walls. Hinata’s steps are light, slipping on the dusty floor, up the decaying staircases until he finally makes it deep enough into the building where no light bothers to illuminate the abandoned desks and papers and cabinets. 

The stone feels like it’s both burning in Hinata’s palm and freezing his skin. The magic throbs at the edge of his mind. It’s so close. He feels bile rise in the back of his throat as he moves, but he swallows it down, breathing heavily. The stone is so small, but it feels _so heavy._

A little more. A little deeper. He isn’t sure about anything. Would someone be able to find it here? Should he take it to Tsukki? He always reports back to Tsukki if he isn’t certain about a decision, but is it safe to bring this thing into the castle, into the heart of his city? It feels like a bomb, waiting to be detonated. No, he can’t. It has to be buried, hidden, far from anyone, where no one can reach it and try to use it, oblivious to the evil that’s contained within. _Where did those guys even get it?_ He’d have to go back for them. But, first.

Hinata slips it in the drawer of a broken desk, between sheafs of yellowed paper and forgotten writing utensils. Scraps of notes and crumpled wrappers litter the inside of the drawer, and he pushes the stone to the far back, brushing the papers over it to conceal it better. His heart is in his throat. He hasn’t truly been scared in a long time, but the darkness is pressing against him, and it’s making it hard to breathe.

Once he’s done he gets the hell out of there, back into the light. He wants more than ever to lift his hood and feel the morning air on his skin, but he still has things to do.

The two men are where he left them, arguing loudly.

“You should have taken it a long time ago from that person in the alley.”

“What, and hurt the guy? Yeah, he’s a thief, but I didn’t want to _hurt_ him, Akaashi! Damn it, what the hell are we going to do now? That was our only chance, and we freaking _lost_ it? What are we going to tell them, huh, oh, sorry, you can never get your lives back now because we _lost the stone.”_

“I told you we should not have trusted the Crow.”

“They said it was bad, anyway, maybe they’re right! From _Black?_ If that’s true then it’s a good thing that they stopped us!”

“How is it a good thing that now we can’t help our friends?”

Hinata marches forward, the air around him curling, churning in warning. He mostly does it to cool himself off, he’s been in his uniform for hours now and even with the incredibly airy, flexible material, the sun is not kind to the full body suit. _“Where did you get the stone?”_

The taller man, Bokuto, crosses his arms, head tilted up in consideration. “Tell us what you mean by _Black._ How do you know it’s dark magic? Why should we trust you?”

 _Oh, god, no, don’t trust anyone,_ he wants to say, but instead he stops right in front of them and says, _“I can help you save your friends. In return, tell me where you found the stone.”_

Inwardly he cringes. He shouldn’t be taking up missions without Tsukishima’s permission, but the _stone,_ something like that is very, very bad news. He needs to make sure nothing like that will ever harm his city. Stop threats, that’s his job.

Bokuto turns back to his companion, and Hinata watches their silent debate. In his head he has his own, dreading their answer. There’s so much unknown, how can he help save their friends, he doesn’t even know what’s wrong with them. And the stone, he doesn’t even want to know where it came from, he wants to stay far away from everything involving it, but he _needs_ to know in order to protect his city.

Akaashi is the one who faces him, fixing a blue green stare in the general area of Hinata’s eyes, since his mask conceals his entire face. Hinata waits patiently while Akaashi seems to struggle to speak. “Look,” he spits out. “Meet us by the docks tomorrow morning. You can meet our friends, and see if you can help us at all. They’re the ones who gave us the stone in the first place, we don’t know where they got it from. That’s the truth. You don’t have to come, but you won’t find out where the stone came from unless you do.”

Hinata’s eyes narrow, but their faces are open and resigned, they’re not lying. It _sounds_ like a lie, like such an obvious trap. _Meet us when we’ve got backup and time to prepare and then we’ll talk._ But something in Hinata tells him that’s not it. Maybe it’s their desperation, or the fact that they suggested this at all, despite it sounding incredibly suspicious. They don’t look that dumb. 

Hinata’s wind dies down, and all that’s left is the natural, quiet breeze. The two men wait for him, their gazes calm, and he wonders what could be so important that they would trust a complete stranger with their friends. And maybe that’s all Hinata needs, really. 

He gives a curt nod, and he can feel their eyes on him as he turns and runs in the opposite direction.

…

He’s sweating, orange hair sticking to his forehead, and Tsukishima knows he is not going to like what he’s about to hear.

Tsukishima closes his eyes, putting up a hand to stop the little gremlin from opening his big mouth, mentally preparing himself for the worst. As soon as Hinata had slid into his office, panting and hours late, Tsukishima had instantly felt a migraine coming on. It was like a Pavlonian reaction at this point.

“Straight to the point,” Tsukishima almost begs (but doesn’t, obviously). 

Of course, the rat ignores him. “Tsukki, don’t be mad-” The migraine worsens. “-but see, there were these guys in the alley, and it looked like they were robbing this other guy, but actually they weren’t, which was confusing but actually- oh, yeah, they’re _pirates-”_ Tsukishima sucks in a breath, but Hinata doesn’t slow, “-or privateers, whatever, still cool- _anyway,_ they had this stone, that’s what they were robbing the other guy for- well, they weren’t _robbing,_ but that’s what I thought at first, but the other man had stolen it from _them_ -”

“A stone?”

“Yeah! Except it felt really awful.” Tsukishima can count on one hand the amount of times he’s seen this expression on Hinata’s face. Still, serious, his two toned gaze wide and unnerving. Tsukishima feels something heavy drop in his chest. “It was really bad, Tsukki. Really-” he glances, down, away, “I hid it. They didn’t feel the evil on it, all they felt was the power. It was really powerful. They wanted to use it to help their friends, there’s something wrong with them.”

Tsukishima shuts his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose under his glasses. He looks up at Hinata, who’s leaning over the other side of his desk, probably getting sweat all over the rich mahogany, he thinks absently. A stone, with evil magic, and it’s powerful. Okay, okay. This is bad, but if it’s just a stone, then- “Where did they get it from?"

If possible Tsukishima’s mood sours even more at the sight of Hinata’s sudden inability to look him in the eye. Hinata reaches up and rubs the back of his neck, smiling hesitantly. _“What,_ Hinata.” For a person highly trained in espionage and undercover ops, Hinata is remarkably terrible at hiding things. At least when it comes to hiding things from _Tsukishima_. 

“Well, first of all, I don’t know, because _they_ didn’t know. But they got it from their friends, who they’re trying to save, and-” he bites his lip, and Tsukishima grinds his teeth, “we kind of made a deal? I’d help them save their friends, and they’d tell me where they got the stone from? So we could stop it! Make sure the evil doesn’t reach the city! I totally kept my head back there!”

Tsukishima would love to kick him right out of the room and slam the door in his face now please.

However, Tsukishima _is_ capable of keeping his head, unlike the orange haired mess standing across from him looking like a drowned rat with all his sweat, so he says calmly, “Is there anything else?”

“They want me to meet them by the docks tomorrow morning, so I can meet their friends- listen, Tsukki, I _know_ what you’re going to say-” Tsukishima highly doubts that, “-and I know I shouldn’t agree to missions without you knowing about them, and doing all your research and stuff-” then _why,_ “But you didn’t feel it! Just that stone, in the wrong hands, can wipe out a city, probably. It’s horrible. I _have_ to find out where it came from, I have to track down its origins. It could be a part of something bigger and a _lot_ more dangerous.”

“Give me a few hours,” is all Tsukishima says, and Hinata blinks. “Come back in a few hours. Tell me their names, and I’ll do my ‘research and stuff,’” Hinata wrinkles his nose at his finger quotes, “and you will take this mission. The mission of the _stone,_ not these random people. They’re just a lead.”

Hinata sighs, pushing himself away from the desk. Tsukishima notices the beginnings of thumbprint bruises starting to form under his eyes. A small part of him wants to order Hinata to go to sleep, right away, but the logical side of him, the part of him that is Red’s greatest spymaster, makes him say, “One last thing. Your day mission. King Sugawara and Yamaguchi are training Kageyama today. The Kings want you to supervise him as he practices traveling between the worlds, since you’re the only one who can follow him. Out of sight, of course.”

“Can’t catch a break,” Hinata mumbles, huffing. “At least I won’t have to actually talk to him. How long is this going to take?”

“A few hours. Come straight here afterwards.”

Tsukishima refrains from rolling his eyes as Hinata drags himself out of his office, groaning. They’re working their Crow to the bone, on top of the normal servant work. Tsukishima makes a note to himself to cut the guy some slack for the next few days, and then he allows himself an internal chuckle at the ridiculous notion.

... 

“Wherever you open the door in this world is where you’ll open the door in the others. The worlds are layered on top of each other, see, kind of like a cake.”

Cake. Hinata would really love some cake. His stomach rumbles a little.

King Sugawara and Yamaguchi Tadashi stand across from Kageyama Tobio, in front of the smooth stone wall of a church. The church’s garden blooms around them, bright with the promise of summer and rustling in the wind. It's noon, so the church isn’t too busy; the garden is empty aside from them. And Hinata, spying from a little corner under the overhang, where the wooden beams crisscross to support the structure. It’s pretty rare for someone to look up, but just in case, Hinata wears his uniform, which blends into the shadows. 

“-need a token, of a sort, something that is from the world you’re trying to get to,” Sugawara is saying. Next to him Yamaguchi pulls something small from his pocket. Hinata could probably make it out, if he squinted, but he’s too busy thinking about cake. “This is a game piece from Grey. Remember which one is Grey?”

Kageyama mumbles something Hinata doesn’t bother making out. Yamaguchi nods, “Yeah! You’ll start there, it’s probably the safest.”

Sugawara gives Kageyama the same smile Hinata remembers from countless of his own training exercises, the one that says, do your best, okay? “Your mission is this: the door you make here will open behind a schoolyard in Grey, if I can remember correctly.” Hinata’s only seen the maps the Crown has on hand of the parallel worlds a couple times to update them with Sugawara, but he thinks Suga’s probably right. He stifles a yawn. “Find your way to the front of the school, don’t worry, they don’t have classes on Sundays, and draw the symbol again. This time, you hold this coin.” Sugawara glances at Yamaguchi, who produces a shiny coin. “It is from Red, so it will take you back here. Yamaguchi and I will be waiting on the other side.”

Hinata tunes them out as they fuss over the logistics (don’t interact with anyone, don’t use any other magic - to which Kageyama cringes and shakes his head furiously, don’t linger, etc., etc). His very first mission was a little bit different from this. For one, he had been much younger, only just turned five, and he had worn his very first, newly made black uniform. He’d kept pushing off the hood, and bouncing around without paying attention; his trainer, Ukai, had had to drag Sugawara out to help contain him. And then when he got to Grey, he had gotten lost, and forgotten what words to say, or how the symbol looked, to take him back home. That was when he’d met Kenma.

Kageyama disappears from Hinata’s sight, leaving behind only a few drops of blood dripping from the perfectly drawn symbol on the wall. Hinata sighs, and twists upwards to crane his neck at the beam above his head, where he’s already drawn his own symbol. He reaches in one of the uniform’s many hidden pockets and closes his fist around his music player, one of the first things he’d acquired from Grey Tokyo. His whisper is stifled from behind his mask, _“As Travars.” Travel._

Hinata is dropped unceremoniously onto green carpet, landing lightly on both feet. He stands up in what seems to be a library, not that he’s ever spent more than a minute in one. The lights are off, but there’s a window a few feet away that illuminates dusty shelves and glossy book covers. The other side of the wall then, which means the schoolyard Kageyama should have emerged in must be right outside the window. Hinata takes a quick peek, grimacing at the grimy glass. He can’t see Kageyama, but he shouldn’t be too far.

Hinata takes full advantage of the tall bookshelves up against the wall as he scampers as high as the window goes. The bookshelves are on either side of the window, which is narrow but nearly reaches the ceiling, so Hinata leans forward a little and pushes open the highest window pane. He stretches out of it, balancing with his legs on the bookshelf from inside. It takes a little kick and then he’s shimmying out the window, twisting his body to face upwards as he crawls like a spider out of the window onto the wall of the school. 

There are other windows dotted up the wall of the school, so Hinata, as quickly as he can since he’s a very obvious spot of darkness in broad daylight, despite the dark grey wall mostly blending in with his uniform, grasps the nearest ledge, and then the next, and eventually gets himself up to the roof. His favorite place, on any building.

It’s easy after that to skip to the other end of the roof and peer down at the entrance to the school, where Kageyama should be waiting. An empty metal bike rack glints in the bright sun and blinds him for a second, but he blinks and then blinks again, in confusion, because there is no one at the entrance to the school. Kageyama is nowhere in sight. 

_Shit._

Tsukki is going to kill him for losing their _Antari._

Hinata is _so done_ with Kageyama right now.

He scans the entire radius of the school from his vantage point. Most of the buildings around the school are tall, and the streets branching out from the schoolyard are narrow. They’re pretty busy too, which worries Hinata. What if Kageyama loses control again? In a city that doesn’t even know what magic is. Hinata would have to step in, and he desperately, vehemently does not want to do that.

In the end he didn’t have to worry, because in a city without a lick of magic for itself, Kageyama’s _Antari_ magic stands out like a sore thumb. He can tell Kageyama’s keeping a furiously tight hold on it, because it’s not leaking out everywhere like it would if he paid no attention, but Hinata is made of magic himself, so he zeroes in on it like a bloodhound. It doesn’t feel right, still, but the revulsion has lessened since Kageyama’s loss of control. He’s not sure why. But, he’s never been one to dwell on things, so he dismisses the curiosity.

Hinata doesn’t follow Kageyama’s slender form in the crowds of people so much as he follows the magic itself. Kageyama is walking down the street across from the empty schoolyard, alongside busy passersby that pay him no attention. As Hinata hops from window ledge to window ledge back down the side of the building, keeping Kageyama in sight, he notices that Kageyama’s looking up, his mouth slightly open, staring at the bright signs and telephone lines cluttering the entire stretch between each building. Cars fill the street beside him, bustling past with growling engines and loud honks, which seem to startle him a few times. Hinata can’t quite make out his expression from his distance, but he knows what he’d find if he did, the same expression he had when he was five, and Kenma first guided him through the streets of Grey: fascination. 

Hinata, not breathing heavily yet but knowing he’s going to start if he wants to keep up with Kageyama, slips past the schoolyard, staying behind the trees, out of sight, and takes a running leap up the next building by the school. It’s considerably taller, so it takes Hinata a whole minute to climb up the side and up onto the roof. He’s so annoyed at his slight decrease in speed, which he writes off as lack of sleep. He peers back down to the street below, squinting past the chaos, trying to make out that familiar head of glossy black hair in the midst of the crowds. He spies him further up the street.

Hinata keeps up with Kageyama’s annoying detour by leaping from rooftop to rooftop, which is easy since they’re so close together and are right beside the street Kageyama walks down. Hinata _gets it,_ really. Granted, the first time he came here he was able to follow the mission without getting distracted, at only five years old (it was because he got lost, but the point stands). But it’s a new world, one with things beyond what anyone back home could ever imagine. _Electric_ magic, like Kenma had told him once. Technology, machines, electricity. This world had no magic, so it made its own.

It’s fascinating.

But Hinata is just _pissed._

 _Why does he have to do this_ now _? I’m so tired. Can’t he visit later? He has a_ mission _, damn it._

And then, of course, _just_ Hinata’s luck, Kageyama is lost.

He can tell because Kageyama has stopped at an intersection and has not moved from his spot for two minutes now. Kageyama had glanced around, probably taking one look at the seemingly random passage of cars in the intersection and declaring it just too much, and then he had turned back around and now has not moved from his position. Hinata, from his perch high above any onlookers, rolls his eyes very expressively. _And he had called_ me _the dumbass._

He’s contemplating whether he should just ditch Kageyama and go back to Red with the truly tragic news that Kageyama had decided to go off on his own instead of working for the Crown, but then he sees someone bump into Kageyama, sending him stumbling into the street. The. Very busy street-

Kageyama hasn't even looked up, he’s just staring down at the gravel on all fours. The cars honk, but no, the speed, the turn, the driver who won’t be able to see him as they turn at the very last second, but Hinata’s so far-

His arm raises and his palm pushes out without him even thinking about it, fingers spread and burning. Hinata _shoves._

The atmosphere of the world pushes back, but it has never seen Hinata’s magic before, and it caves under its force. The limits of the world shift, snap. Hinata focuses, and he can feel cotton fabric under his fingertips, hear the car horn, the squeal of tires, so much clearer, like he’s so much closer. There’s a second where Kageyama, or something around Kageyama, resists, but Hinata cannot be stopped, and it burns away in the warmth of his magic.

Hinata watches through half glowing eyes as Kageyama is thrown back onto the safety of the street, out of range of the coming car, as if by an invisible force. Hinata drops his hand. The car slams to a stop at the curb, the other vehicles driving around it, and someone urgently dashes out of the car to get to Kageyama. Hinata, far above on the rooftop, stares, barely comprehending as the tiny form of Kageyama on the ground backs away from the stranger and runs back the way he came. Hinata’s heart is racing. His palms feel cold. He’s never- did he do that? He’s never done that before…

He blinks at the spot where Kageyama had just left. _Damn it, snap out of it._ Okay, new weird magic thing he can do. Okay. It’s been twenty years but here’s a new trick he can do, great, this is great, not scary at all (maybe if he keeps telling himself that it will become true). What even was that? 

He can’t think about that now, no. Kageyama is gone. Hinata swears under his breath (he never used to swear this much before he met Kageyama), and runs back to the other end of the roof, taking a flying leap over to the next building. He has to catch up. He senses Kageyama is just ahead of him, taking a wrong turn and doubling back. Hinata follows the trail of his magic since he can’t see Kageyama himself, and eventually Hinata lands on the last rooftop, the one right beside the school, overlooking the schoolyard. 

_Oh, shit._

This is officially one of the worst missions of his life.

Six shadowy figures stand in a wide circle in the center of the schoolyard, dripping with darkness so thick and concentrated that Hinata can make out tall human forms and the vague shape of their profiles. The ground is rolling with what looks like black smoke, but deeper, darker. Curling up around the tree trunks, the bike rack. The schoolyard is empty of onlookers, the streets surrounding it oddly abandoned, even in the middle of the day.

And in the middle of the circle stands Kageyama, shoulders hunched, scowling, fists againsts his sides. _Do_ not _use your magic, Kageyama,_ Hinata wants to scream at him, _it’ll only make things worse,_ but no sooner has Hinata processed this thought that Kageyama alights himself on fire. _I have the best luck,_ Hinata thinks scathingly. 

The fire is wild, strong, but it’s uncoordinated. It rages out of Kageyama’s shaking form, spreading outward, and Hinata has a faint hope that it will burn away the shadows, but that hope is immediately squashed. The shadowy figures are-

Kageyama gasps, _“No!”_ and the shadows melt, shift, swallow the flames, suffocating them in darkness, and so quickly Kageyama is extinguished. The sunlight above has been hidden by thick, unnatural clouds, plunging them in a dull, grey light, like early morning, when the shadows are still long and the light is too weak to burn them away. 

With the protection of his flames gone, Kageyama is defenseless. The shadows wrap around his throat, and the figures grip his skin, tearing apart his magic. Kageyama struggles against them, snarling, his magic streaming from him in waves, but the shadow figures strip that apart too, swallowing the power, canceling it out. He screams, sudden and strangled, blood spilling from the gashes in his skin, black in the dim light. 

Hinata is.

_Move._

Hinata is paralyzed. 

_Move._

He moves. 

Hinata leaps from the building, wind rushing in his ears and wrapping around him to slow the fall. He brings his magic to the surface, the warmth from before spreading into a familiar raging furnace, and when he lands white hot fire curls up from his boots. _“Stop it!”_

The shadows turn as one. The darkness grins, Kageyama’s blood glitters. 

“Get _away from him!”_

His arms raise and the fire follows, slamming in a wall of blinding flame directly at the shadows, the dripping darkness. It tries to swallow him, he feels it, but he screams, shoving harder, his fire rising, strengthening. The light is overwhelming, but his eyes are wide open, watching the shadows retreat once the balance in power tips. Kageyama’s bleeding body drops to the clear stone ground, limp. The black smoke is gone. 

Hinata’s fire drifts away slowly, his wind calming the flames until they disappear and the magic curls back inside his chest. He hangs his head, gasping, shaking with the effort. He sways on his feet, but lifts his face, taking in the empty schoolyard, now scorched black. Empty-

 _There._ A shift in the natural shadows under the trees. They’re still here. Hinata runs forward, palms raising, growling, but there’s only one figure, slender as a knife, already melting back into the faint shadows as the sun breaks through the clouds and chases them away. 

Except the last second, just as the last sliver of the shadowy figure fades away, Hinata’s gaze drifts, just for a moment. And, captured in his peripherals, a glimpse.

Of wide, catlike gold eyes, as familiar to him as his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a whole outline carefully planned out and then Fukurodani came along (see: updated tags). So that is why this update is more than twice as long as the other chapters, which is great because I'm late posting, so hopefully that makes up for it. From now on though, I think the chapters are going to be 6k-8k, and I'll probably update every two to three weeks. 
> 
> Also, thank you so much for your comments and kudos! It's really a great motivator and it makes me insanely happy to know people are reading this and liking it! Keep at it!


	4. hides the face, lies the snake

_Kageyama dreams of light._

_It burns him._

_Scorches him, blinds him, tears him apart like he’s made of paper. He can’t scream; he has no voice in this world._

_The light is burning and excruciating, and then it is warm._

_Warm, and safe._

... 

He’s wrong, he has to be wrong. _Of course_ he’s wrong. 

He really doesn’t want to be right.

Hinata casts a glance back at Kageyama's broken body, oddly small on the cement of the schoolyard. The gashes have mostly stopped bleeding, but there’s a lot of blood surrounding him in bright red pools. Hinata huffs in frustration, looking back over to where the shadow had just disappeared. _Stay or follow. Save or fight._

_Fight to save._

He knows it’s the wrong decision.

He knows Kageyama doesn’t have a lot of time, he doesn’t know how durable this other _Antari_ is, but that’s _a lot_ of blood. He knows the logical thing to do is retreat, take Kageyama back to the castle so he can heal, regroup with Tsukishima about what happened.

But. 

_Those eyes. Why would he do this? Who were the others around him?_

_A gentle hand, ruffling his wild curls. Looked up, and that slight smile, glittery eyes, two toned hair._

_“You’re doing great, Shouyou.”_

Hinata’s gaze hardens. He runs, ignoring the sight of Kageyama’s crumpled body in his peripherals, at where the shadows had disappeared into the fabric of the world, where he’d caught that glint of gold eyes, glowing like embers against coal black. People are coming, he can hear sirens and shouts as Kageyama is seen, as whatever spell warding off bystanders is lifted. They’ll help him, he tells himself. And he will recover, and return by himself to Red. This is all Hinata manages to conclude before his mind is overtaken by the shock and furious betrayal guzzling through his veins like gasoline.

Running, he presses open the wound on his arm, hot blood spilling onto his shaking fingers. There’s nothing in front of him but a mesh fence, and a measly tree, barely casting any shadows at all, at least not real ones. Someone shouts at him, and he can feel Kageyama beginning to wake, his magic a weak tremble as it rises. He doesn’t look back. His fingers catch against the rough bark as he draws the symbol. It’s not ideal, but he knows it will work. 

The token is already pressed tight in his fist as he speaks the words, _As Travars._

He’s back where he started, in the same empty spot Kageyama had been when Sugawara was explaining the training to him. Sugawara and Yamaguchi must be waiting on the other side of the building, where they expected Kageyama to turn up. _I’m sorry._ The apology flashes through Hinata’s mind too quick to realize. His thoughts are racing.

_Where, where._

He’s never been able to quite sense this sort of emptiness, the kind trailing in the wake of these shadows. They don’t give off poison energy like the stone, or magic like Kageyama and himself, it’s just a void. A blankness. He can’t sense it because there’s nothing _to_ sense.

_“You’re doing great, Shouyou.”_

_The little flame on his fingertip dances and trills, bright and captivating. There’s no fear, no pain, nothing but Kenma’s cool presence beside him, solid and reassuring under the dark red sky, as they sit on the edge of the roof, his entire, beautiful city sprawled out beneath them._

Hinata leaps straight up, higher than humanly possible, directly onto the roof of the small shop. From his higher vantage point, he watches, waiting, his eyes never leaving his surroundings as he slides a knife from his uniform and slashes quickly across his forearm, parallel to his last cut. He doesn’t need to look as he draws the symbol. He could do it in his sleep.

The white rook makes its way into his clenched fists, and a muttered phrase to his lips. The red of the world drops away to white.

_“It’s a music player.”_

_The device is cool in his small hands. He looks up as Kenma leans over, gently fitting something heavy and black over his head, covering his ears. What is- everything is muffled. “Kenma?” He gasps, confused. “I can’t hear-”_

_Kenma takes his hands, holding the music player between them, and presses on the raised symbols. Hinata blinks, and then-_

_There’s something in his ears._

_A sound, a voice._

Hinata searches, Traveling in a blur of muttered words and dripping blood, leaping between rooftops and cobbled streets and paved streets and white marble and red stone and grey cement, his drawings never faltering, perfect though rushed, just like he was trained. Creating doors upon doors, bridges upon bridges, as he searches, the confusion and betrayal focusing his mind and starting to eat away at his heart.

He’s wrong, he has to be.

He’s a slip of shadow, unseen, faster than an eye could see. 

Blood cakes his black gloves, so he rips them off, scarred hands barred and stained red. Knuckles white on the fist that holds all three of his tokens. He’s using too much magic, he knows, but he barely feels the strain. 

_Thin arms wrap around a barely solid form. He buries his face in Kenma’s stomach, scared of the unfamiliar noises, and Kenma’s hand comes to rest on his head, stroking._

_“Just listen, Shouyou.”_

_Kenma’s voice intertwines with the music, soft and familiar, and he relaxes. He listens. The sounds are slow, lilting. Like. Like flowers, or the river by the castle. Like a giggle, or the satisfying ting of his knives when he sharpens them. Happy sounds. The voice is a woman’s._

_It’s like a hug._

_Like the one Kenma envelops him in._

_Warm. Safe._

There. That gap of emptiness in the fabric of a grey world, melting in and out of existence as it travels left, right, up, down the streets. Hinata follows it, keeping to the high walls of the shops and apartments, above the sparse amount of passersby. If they bothered to look up, they’d maybe catch a glimpse of a stark black blur, zipping against the dark grey walls, but Hinata is too high, and too fast, so he is invisible to them. 

Even if he weren’t, he’d barely care.

All that matters.

Is.

_Kenma’s larger hands come behind his ears and carefully slip the weight off. Hinata can hear his surroundings again, but he’s disappointed that he can’t hear the music anymore._

_“I like that,” he decides. “Is it magic?”_

_“Of a sort.”_

_“Here’s your magic back, Kenma!” he holds it out, beaming. “It’s so cool!”_

_The smile Kenma gives him is small but it feels like home. “Keep it.”_

He’s back here again. The cold, empty rooftop, blackened and high above the bright lights and sounds of the electric city. He stands on the edge of the roof, boots spread on the stone of the ledge, trembling, staring. 

The shadow stands at the center of the rooftop. Waiting.

Hinata rips off the mask, scowl furious and orange hair lifting in the wind. His shoulders are tight, his teeth gritted. His one gold eye glows. The other glitters like onyx.

_Why? Why?_

His head drops abruptly, like the string holding up his body have snapped. He sags forward, knife in palm, _slice across pale skin,_ and his fingers drag through the blood for the last time.

He draws the symbol slowly.

_The words are whispered on choked air._

The ground shifts under him, to a different, lighter grey marble. The blackened white stone of the dead spot he’d found Hoshiumi’s corpse. If he were paying any attention at all, Hinata would notice the sudden lack of sound, as the bustling city noises of Grey Tokyo fell away to the tense silence of White. 

Instead, he is lifting his head. Eyes wide and pleading. Blood dripping freely from the wounds on his arms, orange hair seeming to float around him as his magic trembles and shudders.

The shadow is a little more than a shadow now.

He stands passively, hands loose at his sides, straight hair falling into his face and shielding his eyes. 

Hinata can’t take it anymore.

_“What’s wrong with you?”_ The tears bubble up, his shoulders shake, emotion floods. “Kenma, _are you a bad guy?”_

He doesn’t know what to say, how to put his confusion and betrayal into words. Kenma, _his_ Kenma, who’s been his friend for as long as he can remember, _tried to kill someone._ He was with those _evil magic people._ What’s going on, this can’t be true, _tell me this isn’t what it looks like._

_Please tell me I’ve got it all wrong._

“Shouyou.”

Kenma steps forward, hand outstretched. Hinata tries to back away, but the ledge drops off to open air, so he has nowhere to go. “Stop! Just- explain what’s going on, Kenma! Why were- _why did you try to kill Kageyama?”_

Kenma’s eyes widen a fraction. “You know that boy?”

“He’s- it doesn’t matter! Why were you with those evil people! They have black magic!” _He’s wrong, he has to be wrong, Kenma is_ good, _he’s his friend, Kenma would never become evil and try to kill someone._

_Right?_

“Shouyou. Please listen to me.” Kenma closes his eyes. Sighs. “I- we-there’s something you have to know.”

The wind howls in the quiet between them, whips Hinata’s hair into his face with wild abandon. Tears well up in his vision, but his gaze remains fixed on Kenma, so the tears swell over and streak in cold tracks down his ruddy cheeks. He doesn’t move a muscle.

“I told you a long time ago that I was an echo.” _Like something that once existed, and all that’s left is a memory. An empty shell._ “I’m not the only one.”

Hinata’s lips are dry and cracked as the whisper leaves him, “The other shadows…”

“Yes. Echoes. We. We knew each other, back then. We were...friends.” He turns his head away. “It doesn’t matter now. Shouyou, we were wrong.” His voice trails off, growing quieter. “It wasn’t what we thought.”

“What do you mean, what-” 

“I’m sorry.” It’s not said harshly. It’s barely said with any emotion at all. But there’s the serrated edge of finality, and Hinata knows he’s done speaking. Hinata stares, the moment frozen in time, locked onto Kenma’s face though it’s hidden behind his hair. “I’m sorry, Shouyou, that it happened this way. I’m sorry I can’t say any more.”

The silence stretches long and heavy between them. His face without the mask seems too exposed suddenly. He wants to hide, get away. 

There’s the uneven sound of Hinata’s blood, drip, drip, dripping on stone. _“Please…_ explain…” 

As Kenma melts back into the shadows, sliding out of existence, he tilts his head and one catlike eye glints golden from under his hair. 

“There’s a light where we did not expect. And that’s the only thing that saved him in the end.”

…

He made a mistake.

He made so _many mistakes._

The world -whichever one this is now, he can’t remember - tilts on its axis, the edges blurring and sliding together, black spots creeping at the edges of his vision. Hinata’s head feels- 

He feels so heavy, and he can’t-

He can’t _breathe._

_Can’t think._

His movements are slow, like he’s moving through water, through syrup, his limbs are too heavy. His fingers trace the symbol over and over, blood dripping on the stone - _there’s so much -_ and he mutters the words, repeats them, over and over. Like a chant, _As Travars As Travars As Travars-_

But the ground stays solid beneath him.

His magic is a weak, tiny flick of flame, trembling so deep inside him he can barely feel it.

_He made a mistake, he made a mistake, he should have stayed with Kageyama, gone back to the castle, retreated-_

And now he can’t even move.

He’s supposed to be the _Crow,_ the savior, a hero, but how, _how,_ can he call himself that, after he left Kageyama bleeding out on the cement of the schoolyard in a magicless city unfamiliar to him? Self hatred wells up inside his lungs, choking out what little air he’s managed to pull in. 

The shadows are long and dangerous, creeping on the edges of his vision.

He might just die here, alone on a dark rooftop in a harsh city, in a pool of his own cursed blood. 

Maybe he-

- _deserves-_

The world shifts beneath him, finally, but he’s already fading. What little light is left through the blanket of darkness around him is extinguished, and he falls, boots stumbling right over the ledge of the high roof, nothing but empty air and an entirely different world below, but this time the shadows aren’t there to catch him.

…

Kageyama opens his eyes.

The sky is not red, the way he had begun to get used to. It is blue, light and soft and brings out the stark brightness of the white clouds. He decides absently that he likes this sky the most.

“Sir! Sir are you ok-”

He sits up, and the commoners surrounding him fall silent for a beat, before they return louder, and more aggravating in their questions and concerns. Hands fluttering over him, flashing lights directed at him, someone speaking to him in a low voice, _sir, we’re going to need you to cooperate-_

He feels like shit.

The cement is rough under his palms as he staggers to lift himself to his feet, muscles throbbing and feeling like they’re about to snap. His entire skin feels heavy and unwanted, like he doesn’t belong in this body anymore, and his magic is a barely-there wisp. 

Kageyama feels vaguely overwhelmed by the sheer unfamiliarity of his surroundings, all traces of his earlier fascination burnt away by the pain spread like a bruise across his whole body. He’s tired, and thirsty, and just wants to go home. 

He bows his head and presses past the throng of people, shoulders sturdy and unyielding in the path of people who might as well not exist at all, he barely notices them. His feet take him in the direction of the school, though his mind doesn’t register this. His thoughts are a storm cloud of stewing thoughts, lost and confused and smarting with electric feelings. On edge, shaky. A bow stretched taut, a little light pressure away from snapping.

Those _shadows_ . Clawing, tearing, taking. Or, even further back, that shove. He was lying there in the middle of the rough street, with a snarling metal beast charging him head on, his mind completely, helplessly blank. His magic forgotten, thoughts gone, body frozen. _Weak, weak._

And then something like a hand slamming into him, disembodied and burning with a magic he’d never felt before. Shoving him out of the path of the beast, back to safety.

Was that himself? Did his own magic act without his control and save him? But it was so strong, and unfamiliar. No, it couldn’t have been his. But whose? In a world that wasn’t supposed to have any magic?

And those shadows, much stronger than him, tearing him apart. He had lost control again but it hadn’t mattered because the shadow forms had extinguished it. Who could have been so strong? The memory of the shadows ripping into his magic and his skin surfaces, and he remembers the cold, the choking emptiness that invaded his soul, tearing him from the inside out. Something so powerful, yet so dark.

Why is he _not dead?_

Does it have anything to do with the burning shove from before?

He blinks at a sharp pain in his palm, and looks down to see a knife in his right hand, slid halfway across his palm. The knife is small and dull, just barely sharp enough to pierce skin, and given to him by Yamaguchi with explicit instructions to _not_ make a cut across his palm, he has more nerves there and it will hurt more than if he slices his forearm instead. He frowns down at the stinging pain in his pale hand.

Kageyama is facing the back wall of the school, staring at the pockmarked, dark grey brick slathered in hastily drying paint, absently noticing that the commoners behind him have mostly left the site. It doesn’t matter who sees, though, he can’t be bothered to care.

He meticulously creates the new symbol, not caring that he hasn’t actually finished the initial assignment yet. He just wants to sleep, and he’s already forgotten the plan in the chaos of all that had happened. Symbol finished, Kageyama clutches his red token in desperately tight fingers, and whispers the words at the same time he reaches down inside him and _drags_ his magic out from where it's hiding, buried in his soul. It’s weak, and it doesn’t quite feel right, but the door between worlds opens for him anyway, and he slips on through.

His magic, when it flutters to life, burns hot.

... 

When Hinata wakes up he has one moment of _thank god I’m alive,_ before it’s immediately followed by _oh god I’m going to die._

The world is _moving._

What the hell, what the hell-

His mask is gone, probably still back on the rooftop in White, and though his head feels like it’s being broken apart with a sledgehammer and his entire body feels the same, if ten times worse, he can still see.

Except, he doesn’t really know _what_ he’s seeing.

Is that...wood?

He’s laying down, and the world is moving under him like gelatin, but the initial fear at this development has faded as his clouded mind clears and he realizes that he’s staring at the wooden ceiling of the lower deck of a ship. Meaning he’s on the water.

Shit, how the hell did he get on _water?_

He tries to lift his arm, muscles screaming, but he can’t. He’s been tied down to what seems to be a bed, probably bolted down so it doesn’t move with the swaying floor. His stomach rolls as the ground under him does. Hinata gives another experimental tug on his bonds, and realizes with some surprise that they’re just rope. Strong, heavily knotted rope, but it’s just rope. 

Do they not know who he is?

His strength is returning, but he barely needs it. In just a few seconds, the rope is in a pile at his feet as he stands. He takes in his surroundings warily, legs spread as he tries to balance on the shifting floor, bile rising.

He was right, he’s on the lower deck of a ship. Barrels are tied down and stacked in the corner, and the sides are made up of cots of varying sizes. The ceiling is low, and creaks as whoever’s on the top deck walks above. It’s dark down here. Musty, and there’s that prickle on his skin that tells him magic is around him. He’s in Red, then. He managed to Travel right as he was losing consciousness. There are people on the deck above him, but he can’t sense any of the dark magic he’d come across before. 

He hears voices, and footsteps. Someone’s coming. Right, time to go. There’s no visible exits, aside from the ratty looking door across the room, so Hinata slips up a wall and waits right above the doorway. Whoever brought him here didn’t even touch any of the knives hidden in his uniform, probably because they took one look at him and figured he was no threat. From his spider-like position upside down, the unsteady rocking of the ship nearly makes him puke into his mask. It’s only from intensive training that he manages to hold down his nausea, if barely.

Hinata sighs. His whole body aches. He’s left Kageyama for dead. The friend who basically raised him is probably evil. Maybe he’s not the good guy after all, maybe he’s the villain. After all, how could he be the hero, with all the mistakes he’s made?

The voices outside the door are closer now. “There has to be someone, I just know it. Every one of the most powerful magicians in the entire world will be here in a few weeks for the festival, at least one of them will be powerful enough, right? We can do this. Plus that magician from before I mentioned, who might meet us this morning!” This... _morning?_

Hinata allows himself a brief moment where he lowers his head closer to the wall he’s clinging to and quietly panics. 

“He probably won’t show, if what you told me is true.”

“I can’t wait for the festival! Do you think I should enter? D’ya think I’d _win?_ ”

The footsteps stop right outside the door, lingering in the hall beyond. There’s a pause. “Yeah, maybe you’ve got a chance.”

In less than a second, Hinata has sprung back to the bolted down bed and in another second he has the ropes retied around his body, his eyes closing just as the door swings open. “Wake up, little dude!”

Hinata slowly blinks open his eyes, pretending to blearily stare up in confusion, and then, fear. “Wh-wha-”

“Calm down!” a familiar black and white striped head appears above him, grinning widely. “We’re not going to hurt you, promise! Kuroo, tell him you’re not going to hurt him.”

A voice from somewhere behind Hinata’s head says flatly, “I’m not going to hurt you. You’re tied up so you don’t fall off the bed, okay? Bokuto, untie him.”

As Bokuto gets to work untying the rope pinning Hinata to the bed, he continues, “So what even happened to you? Akaashi said you just fell out of thin air. I wasn’t paying attention but Akaashi told me to catch you, so I did, and I got to say, you looked in pretty bad shape! Is everything okay?”

Hinata immediately sits upright and backs up against the wall, the sheets of the bed scrunching in his tight fists. He lets his bottom lip tremble, his eyes go big, his whimper to escape. “Are- p-pirates? Please let me go!”

“No, no! We’re privateers!”

“Bokuto, he’s seconds away from blubbering, hold up.” Hinata had seen Bokuto’s companion out of the corner of his eye the moment he’d sat up, but now he almost doesn’t want to look at him directly. 

Because he looks like Kenma.

Not _like_ Kenma, per se, but he has the same wispy black smoke drifting off of his form, the shadows clinging to him like moss, dripping from his skin. He is taller than Kenma, with messy black hair and a devil’s smirk buried under the darkness. 

Hinata meets his eyes.

They are golden, and, like Kenma, they are the only thing alive about him.

“Please let me go!” Hinata wails, curling further away from them as he thinks. He’s on a ship. Definitely a pirate ship, regardless of what this Bokuto person claims. He’s on a pirate ship with one of the shadows that tried to kill Kageyama, one of the shadows that are Kenma’s _friends,_ and they are somehow also friends with the two people Hinata had met before, with the black magic stone. Meaning they’re the ones trying to get their lives back. Kenma is trying to get his life back. Why didn’t he tell him? And _why_ did he try to kill Kageyama? Why use black magic? Kenma was the one who told him all those years ago all the stories, all the dangers of using magic from Black Tokyo. The corruption, the evil twisted into the very heart of the magic…

Why would he do all of this?

“Please calm down, we’re not going to hurt you!” Bokuto cries, distressed, and Kuroo looks up towards the creaking ceiling in exasperation. “We just want to make sure you’re okay, you weren’t waking up! So... Are you okay?” His eyes are big and earnest and Hinata, even if he was only pretending to be terrified, feels himself relaxing. 

He stares back at Bokuto hugely, falling silent. His hands and knees are curled to his chest, his body curving in to make himself seem smaller than he already is, saying _please don’t hurt me,_ and, deliberately, _I pose no threat._ He nods slowly.

“Okay, he’s fine now, Bokuto, get him off the ship.”

Hinata and Bokuto both whip their heads around to Kuroo, who is leaning against one of the barrels by the bed, darkness smoking off of him gently. Hinata absolutely cannot let this lead slide. He’s in proximity of this shadow person, this echo, and he knows Kenma and he knows about the stone. If he was ever going to find answers, it would have to be now.

_Shit, Kageyama._ Maybe he’s fine, Hinata thinks dubiously. He had been waking up just as Hinata left. Maybe he Traveled back to Red and now he’s curled all nice and warm up at the castle, completely unaware of all this mess Hinata has to deal with. 

_Or maybe he’s dea-_

“I don’t have anywhere to go!” Hinata blurts. “Please, let me stay here for a night! I’ll- I won’t bother you!”

Bokuto looks at him strangely. “You don’t have a home to go back to? But you look so young, how old are you?”

Hinata is twenty, but he’s seen his own tiny body and baby face enough times in the mirror, and heard enough people mistake his age, to know that he looks about sixteen. Usually he hates it; Tsukishima never fails to make fun of him, has always made fun of him since they were kids and Hinata was incredibly tiny, but this time he’s thankful it matches with this undercover mission he’s suddenly acquired. “Sixteen?”

“That’s so sad!” Bokuto exclaims, and then his eyes widen when Hinata makes his lips start to tremble. “Sorry, I didn’t mean- yes! Of course you can stay with us!”

“Bokuto-” Kuroo says in warning, but he’s waved away. 

“He’s just a kid, Kuroo! You can stay for the night if you want, and then you’ll have to work if you want to stay longer, how about that? You can become a pirate!”

“A privateer.”

“Yes, that!”

This is good, Hinata thinks. Sort of. It’s good because he can scope out whatever’s going on on this ship, but now he can’t go to the castle. Well. He promises himself as soon as he gets the information he needs, he’ll head straight back to Kageyama, and then to Red. Hopefully Tsukishima will go easy on him. He shudders inwardly.

“Thank you so much!” Hinata doesn’t bother pretending when he beams at them brightly, his twisting guilt and worry pushed aside by the determination of a clear plan. Bokuto and Kuroo both blink at his sudden change in mood. “I won’t get in the way, you won’t regret this, thank you, thank you!”

“No problem, little man!” Bokuto reaches over and ruffles his hair as Hinata giggles. “My name’s Bokuto, and this is Kuroo. Hey, tell us what happened with you anyway? You just dropped out of the sky? Was it something to do with magic?”

Dammit, right. “I was doing some training and then I fell! I’m glad you saved me, thank you! Oh, and I’m Hinata!”

“Hi, Hinata!” Bokuto chirps, just as Kuroo says,“What kind of magic do you have?” He doesn’t appear to be suspicious, only absently curious, but Hinata takes in his authoritative demeanor and shivers inside. This man has a sharp eye, Hinata can tell. He’d have to be careful.

“Wind magic! It’s not very strong though…”

Before Bokuto or Kuroo can respond, the door slams open. Framed by the doorway and dripping shadows like Kuroo and Kenma is a pale creature hunched over because he is _huge,_ much, _much,_ too tall for the already low ceiling. His limbs are long and gangly, and if it weren’t for the wide human smile and the big human eyes, Hinata would’ve thought he was a supernatural creature. He suddenly feels very small.

“Captain Bokuto! Mr. Kuroo! He’s here!” The tall man steps further into the room and then his gaze lands on Hinata. The smile returns even stronger. “A child! Hello, I’m Lev, are you a new crewmate? You’re so tiny! You must be like twelve- guys, are you sure we should hire this little kid?”

“He says he’s sixteen but I don’t believe him, he’s probably like… fifteen! Or something,” Bokuto says, equally as energetic as this gigantic man that is now standing closer to the bed Hinata is curled on. Lev looms over Hinata, his green eyes piercing through the darkness wisping off of him like daggers. 

Hinata feels mildly intimidated, and incredibly small, which he hates. He scrambles on his feet, glaring up at this giant, fists clenched. “I’m sixteen!” And oh, how he hates how he has to go along with this. “And just because you're tall doesn’t mean anything, I could still take you on in a fight!” Tsukishima would probably be murdering him about now. _What part of undercover mission do you not understand,_ he’d say. Hinata sticks his tongue out at him in his head. 

Lev smiles and nods good-naturedly, and then turns to Bokuto and Kuroo. “Anyway, Kenma’s back! We can have the meeting now! Also, I made cookies, so we’ll have snacks.” He looks down at Hinata who feels indignant at being ignored. “Do you want cookies? You can’t join the meeting, sorry, original members only, but you can have some cookies if you want!”

Kuroo pushes off from where he was leaning against the barrel, the shadows around him drifting as he melts into the darkness clinging to the edges of the room.“He’s damn late.”

“Enjoy the cookies, Hinata!” Bokuto says as he exits through the door like a normal human, waving back at him. “Save some for me!”

Lev lopes after him, still smiling. “The cookies are on the upper deck! Make yourself at home, kid!”

The door shuts as Hinata grumbles to himself, “We’re probably the same age.” 

Okay, he’s alone now. The steady rock of the ship makes his stomach queasy, but it isn’t too bad. They’re probably docked. They’re probably here for the festival. Hinata stews in his thoughts for a little while, absently curling wind magic around his clammy skin, the room silent aside from the creak of the floorboards above him and the steady sound of waves beyond the walls of the ship. It’s too quiet for a pirate ship.

Once he’s decided enough time has passed, Hinata slips out the door. The hallway outside the little room is dimly lit and carries an ambient glow against the wooden walls, narrow and cramped. There’s another door a little ways down the hall, and then a thin stairwell likely leading to the upper deck of the ship. Are they having the meeting up there or in that second room? Hinata listens, but all he hears is the steady breathing of the ship itself, wind whistling through the weathered wood and waves lapping against the sides, nothing from its inhabitants. 

The ship dips under him and Hinata feels his stomach lurch. He presses a hand to his mouth, gagging, but shoulders through, stepping so lightly on the floorboards down the hallway and up the stairs that there is not a single creak. There’s no need for him to lurk around so silently, he was given permission to go up to the top deck, but something is putting him on edge. The ship is too quiet, the situation too unknown. He instinctively puts his guard up.

He emerges from the heavy wooden hatch to bright sunlight and a welcome gust of salt-tinged wind. The upper deck is eerily empty. Hinata scrambles to his feet and closes the hatch. The ship is not especially large, but it’s regal and open, the masts standing tall and proud above him as white, black, and gold sails rustle in the ocean wind. The sky is wide and tinged red, reflected like blood against the waves as Hinata peers over the side of the ship. 

He finally hears voices, coming from the captain’s cabin at the back of the deck. Muffled, so Hinata creeps closer to make them out. The wood scratches against his cheek as he presses his ear against the wall. Several voices overlap each other, but one rings out strong.

“-the Festival is in three weeks. Then we’ve got the whole week and a dragged out tournament to find someone who can use this magic.”

“There’s bound to be someone-”

“Maybe the winner, we can get ahold of him at the end, just go up and ask-”

“How are we going to get close to them? The winners are always high ranking nobles and arrogant folk, they won’t let us within a hundred feet of them. Whoever the winner is this year, it’s not going to be easy getting them to do this for us.”

There’s a tense pause on the other side of the wall. Hinata chews his lip in thought. They want to get someone powerful enough to bring the lives of the shadows back. The Festival _would_ be the best place to find the most powerful magicians in the region, as people come from all over to compete in the lengthy magic tournament during the day. The games, dancing, music, and bonfires at night are also a huge attraction. Hinata is usually assigned to keeping the city safe during the chaotic week, but he has some warm memories of the festivities when he was younger.

“What about the really powerful Black Suit guy! He was really strong, and he said he’d help us. He was supposed to be here earlier, but he never showed up. Maybe we could find him?”

“A black...suit?”

Hinata recognizes Kenma’s low voice. The feelings that rise are slammed down.

“Bokuto-san and I ran into him yesterday when the stone got stolen. He was very powerful. He could tell that the stone was Black magic.”

Kenma’s voice comes again, flat, cold. “He has no part in this.”

Hinata scrunches his nose in indignation, scowling at the wall like he could reach Kenma through sheer willpower. Who the hell does he think he is? 

“He’s powerful, though, he should still be an option-”

_“No.”_

Hinata’s frustration immediately snuffs out at the knife slash word, his eyes wide and shocked. There’s definitely emotion there this time, but Hinata can’t understand what it is. The meeting on the other side has fallen silent, and then - calm, placating - “Okay.”

It could have been from anyone, but it scabs over the gaping wound Kenma tore with his single word, and Hinata relaxes. He shakes his head, hand ruffling his curls, pushing the sweaty strands out of his face as he forces his raw, rising feelings from his chest.

“Kuroo,” the meeting continues, “You brought the stone from Black Tokyo. Why would you give something like that to us.” It’s the guy from before, Bokuto’s companion that day in the alleys. His words are sharp, suspicious. Hinata narrows his eyes, straining to hear the reply.

“Power is power, Akaashi. You know that. It’s the only thing that has any chance of bringing back our lives.”

“It’s evil magic-”

“It _will save us!”_

There’s silence in the wake of the abrupt shout. Hinata stares at the wall in shock, as if he could see past the wooden boards to the face of the owner of that strangled voice, thick with desperation and tragedy. 

“Is it so bad?” comes a whisper. Hinata does not recognize the speaker. “You’re here, we can see you, you can walk and talk. Aside from the darkness, you look like you’re alive.”

Hinata had asked this question to Kenma before. _What do you mean when you say you want to be alive again? Aren’t you still? You even look almost normal when you’re in Red._

He remembers the endless depth of sadness in Kenma’s gaze, a heaviness and sorrow that sank in Hinata’s chest and left him with the feeling of being close to tears. _I want to be alive, so that I can die._

“Do you know _how long_ we’ve been like this, Konoha?” Kuroo says in the present, voice a cracked growl, raised with anger and pain and sadness. “Do you know how long we’ve waited in the dark for some- some kind of _light,_ or _feeling,_ or _anything?_ It’s cold, so cold. You don’t know. You can’t feel it. It’s like you’re in a frozen lake, beneath the ice, where your body is just numb and your mind is so cold it’s painful, and you can’t remember what the sun feels like against your skin, or how it feels to _feel_ at all. I’d rather-”

His voice breaks off, and Kenma finishes, “We’d rather die.”

The silence rings in Hinata’s ears, and all he can see are Kenma’s desolate eyes, crushing his heart.

“Okay,” comes a voice that sounds like Akaashi, serious and solemn. “Okay.”

…

“I fucking hate him.”

“Kei-”

“You said give him until the next morning, and now it’s next morning and he’s still _not here._ I’m going to murder him.” Tsukishima feels himself trembling. Wind whips through the office, scattering papers and pencils over the cream colored carpet, but he can’t bring himself to care. What the _hell, what the hell._ “Where the _fuck is he.”_

“Calm down, Kei. You’re making a mess.”

Tsukishima pinches the bridge of his nose, blowing out slowly as the wind settles down around him. When he opens his eyes Sugawara is staring down at him in disapproval. He glares right back. “Sorry.”

Yesterday, after a brief meeting in the throne room with a tired and roughed up looking Kageyama about his “progress,” Sugawara had immediately burst into Tsukishima’s office with barely concealed concern. Hinata, who had been sent to Grey Tokyo to shadow Kageyama, had not returned. They’d agreed that Hinata wouldn’t have ditched a mission without a really good reason, but now it’s been hours and the worry and anxiety has built in both of them.

Now Sugawara is leaning against the opposite wall with a frown, his arms crossed. The kingly air he usually puts on is canceled by his tight, hunched shoulders and stormy gaze., and Tsukishima, not for the first time, sees him as less King Sugawara of Tokyo, and more just Suga, one of the men who raised him. Essentially a father figure for him and Hinata. 

“He,” Tsukishima pauses and sighs, pressing his forehead against the desk in front of him. “What could be taking so long? He hasn’t come back and reported.” This is just like him. He’s very rarely ditched a mission, but running off, distracted by something or other? It’s basically ingrained in his personality.

“We just have to trust him.” Sugawara agrees, though his silver gaze still looks troubled. “I just- I just don’t understand. I... Kageyama had come back all scraped up and bloody, Kei. He didn’t have any wounds as far as I could tell, and he said he was fine, but it must have been tied to what made Hinata stay behind. I just- don't...know…”

“There’s a lot we don’t know.” Tsukishima is so, so tired. “I just hope what we don’t know doesn’t come up to bite us in the ass when we’re not prepared.”

“There’s something I want to talk to you about, Kei.” Sugawara pushes off the wall and comes up to Tsukishima’s desk, his expression shifting to something grave. “What do you think about Kageyama’s powers?”

“What? Why ask me, Yamaguchi knows more-”

“I’m asking you because you know Hinata’s abilities almost as much as he knows himself, and I want to know what you think about Kageyama’s. Relative to Hinata’s.” Sugawara drags a hand through his silver hair. “Should we- should we prepare for-”

“You’re asking if he has an affinity.”

Tsukishima pushes his chair back from the desk to face Sugawara fully. The nod in reply is slow, serious. An affinity, towards a specific feature of the natural world- a stronger, deeper connection to an unknown magic any other magician could never hope to grasp. But Kageyama? Unreigned, wild and powerful, and if he had something else? Another power even stronger than what they’ve already seen, unknown and uncontrollable? Tsukishima shoves down the feeling that Kageyama is a bomb right under their noses, waiting to detonate.

“He’s powerful, maybe even as powerful as Hinata. And if he does have another ability…”

“It’s unlikely,” Tsukishima decides. “We don’t even know if this is a normal thing for _Antari._ Hinata could be the exception.”

Sugawara’s gaze is dark and troubled. “And if he isn’t…”

“Hinata and I will take care of him. Everything will be fine. We have greater things to worry about.” Tsukishima glares down at his clenched fists, shoving down the acid feeling that rises. “Hinata will come back. He’ll come back with answers.”

Both Tsukishima and Sugawara stare in silence, at nothing, lost in their heads. Sugawara says finally, “Just hope those answers don’t bring with them questions of their own.”

…

“Can’t wait for the festival! I’m sure we’ll find someone to help you guys!” Bokuto waves on his way out with a bright smile, followed by Akaashi. The rest of Nekoma have already disappeared into the darkness, aside from Kuroo, who remains sprawled in Bokuto’s captain chair, legs crossed and propped up on the wide, sturdy desk. Bokuto excitedly babbles to Akaashi as they leave, “I wonder how those cookies taste!”

The door shuts. The silence buzzes in Kuroo’s ears, and the faint din of the ship grows as Fukurodani carries on with their duties. He sighs, head dropping backwards as he scowls at the ceiling. It would take a miracle for them to actually find a powerful enough magician at the festival, like Fukurodani and his own little band of shadows are planning. It’s a good thing Kuroo never intends to look.

He’s already found one.

Kuroo slips a hand into his pocket and pulls out a small black object. It would normally be cold against his skin, but his skin is just as cold already. The power drips off of it, melting into the darkness wisping off Kuroo. He tosses it up and catches it in a tight squeeze. In the right hands, this stone could make all Kuroo’s dreams come true.

He tucks it back into his pocket, safe and hidden, for now. “Better be worth it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is so late, I'm sorry! I made some art for this fic to compensate, on my Instagram: @molotovwithholyfire :)  
> (Come obsess over Haikyuu - and other anime - with me!)
> 
> Update schedule will be a little rough here on out but next chapter should come in about two weeks.
> 
> Thank you so much for your comments and kudos! I appreciate them so much, I'm so glad you all like this!


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